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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115828">In My Skin, Refuge</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka'>sharlatanka</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Doppler (The Witcher), F/M, Gen, Novigrad (The Witcher), kaer morhen boys, murder mystery in</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 06:09:17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>26,433</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27115828</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Eskel looks into the faces of monsters more often than he does a mirror. After all, what was in the mirror didn't look much different. Far away in Novigrad is a woman with a monstrous secret who knows that behind his scars his eyes are gentle and his smile is kind. As pyres burn in Novigrad, can he keep her safe? Can a monster trust a witcher? Can she bridge the danger and the distance to find him?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eskel (The Witcher)/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>All three of the Kaer Morhen witchers in one place— as rare as an eclipse. Maybe the sky looked a little different in Novigrad that night, but none of them would have known. Lambert had insisted that such a rare occasion called for a night of the high life. Convinced with the promise of bottomless glasses of spirit, Geralt and Eskel begrudgingly agreed to a steam. They were the refuse of society, Lambert argued, but for one night they could stomach deep cleaning the rot off of their bodies like angry cats tolerating a yearly bath. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They gathered in one of the steam pools at the late Dijkstra’s old bathhouse, one looking more like a wet white cat than the other two. Once alcohol began replacing the sweat, however, all three talked over one another in an effort to be the one to tell the next best story. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A silhouette of a slim figure passed by in the shade of the steam and offered another tray of drinks. Her fingers, the first to be visible in the fog, were sheathed in golden rings and semi-precious stones. Golden chains of all shapes dangled from her neck, which was bare. Her blonde hair was tied up in a sheer scarf. She wore a light belted chemise on which the noise of more golden bangles was dampened as she stood to leave with the empty tray. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you girls who work here get this sweaty too?” Lambert asked brazenly. “You could always take that off and join us!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She snorted at the offer. “I am not paid enough to even </span>
  <em>
    <span>sit </span>
  </em>
  <span>next to you. I’m not a girl for hire, I just bring you the drinks. Remember I’m the one deciding what poison goes into them, and whether you’ll enjoy it.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert laughed. As the sound bounced across the walls, she looked at his other two silent collaborators. “Geralt,” she nodded, and gave him a very unskilled wink with one and a half eyelids. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Miss Luchezara.” He answered. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her eyes panned to the third, who was trying his hardest not to meet her gaze. His face was beet red, from alcohol, or from heat, or from being in the same vicinity as an uninhibited Lambert. She smiled a bit; it was a nice contrast— the ruby of his face against the lapis of the tile walls. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and she saw three massive pale scars over his right eye. She noticed the way one of them caught his lip, but then looked away out of respect. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Tell your friend I’m not joking.” Luchezara lightly tapped Geralt on the top of his head before leaving. Eskel picked his gaze up off the floor to see her leave. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Geralt, can I not flirt with </span>
  <em>
    <span>one</span>
  </em>
  <span> woman without you having gotten to her already?” Lambert complained. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was your idea to come here,” he shrugged. “And I haven’t slept with her, if that’s what you’re asking. And some advice, if you meet a nice woman, try to woo her, not ‘get to her’.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He huffed, but laughed. Eskel was still silent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Besides, it isn’t me that’s so concerned with her. Eskel.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn’t respond, his eyes still lingered at the door. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Eskel.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He snapped to with a sharp intake of breath. The steam made him cough. “Hn?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What is it with you and non-humans?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what you mean.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“First that succubus—“ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, come on, don’t bring that up again.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert laughed. “It’s your fault for telling us!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And now you’ve got your eyes on a Doppler.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Who? Her?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Her.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The </span>
  <em>
    <span>barmaid?” </span>
  </em>
  <span>He groaned at their running and rubbed his eyes tiredly. “Not that I’ve got a problem with it— it’s you bastards won’t let that succubus thing go.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not that we won’t let it go,” Lambert chimed in. His voice, less gruff than the other two, always seemed to cut like a blade into conversation. “We’re just glad our ugliest brother can get some somewhere.” He threw his hands up comically to the ceiling. “Bless the Eternal Flame, there’s some creatures in this land that’ll fuck anything.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ha.” Eskel grunted. “But how do </span>
  <em>
    <span>you</span>
  </em>
  <span> know what she is?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s a long story.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well it’s not like we’re in a hurry.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s right, Wolf. I haven’t even punched Lambert yet. That usually happens ‘round hour three.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yeah, Geralt. Tell us another story about a monster you were paid to kill but didn’t follow through.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Alright. This was a while ago here. Maybe a couple of years. I owed some of Novigrad’s underworld a favor for some information that legitimate authorities didn’t want to give. They said they all sank hundreds of crowns into one debtor. Was a reputable merchant. Name of Beracek. Made the corks to every bottle of liquor in Velen. When he started asking for loans from the wrong people, they didn’t question it. He seemed legitimate. But then he defaulted, and he disappeared. By then no one had seen him for two weeks. They came to me to track him after their goons ransacked his villa and took out their frustration on his family— wife and two sons. Only he wasn’t there with them.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fuck…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It didn’t take me too long to find him, though. He was buried in their back garden. Real shallow. Someone stuck some flowers in, to make it look like they were growing just normal. Obvious, but Cleaver’s lackeys didn’t think they were looking for a corpse.” </span>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt with some difficulty dragged the stiff body from the topsoil. He had been missing for two weeks, but the corpse had been ripe for at least a month. There was a jeweled letter opener in his temple. Instant death. But not painless. Had another angry creditor got to him first?” He could barely make out the fingerprints on the letter opener. Human…. and not human. But all one scent; it was muddled by the smell of the earth, and blood, but it was still there. Scratches on his arms and face confirmed: just one attacker. A woman. Or something that resembled one. He was buried with a silver necklace that had the slight smell of burning flesh. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He returned to the interior of the villa, where that same scent hung heavily in the air. Easy to follow. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>It led him straight to Dijkstra’s. He was busy in his office, as he ever was, playing the role of businessman, politician, and criminal.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“With many people in Novigrad do you have a grudge?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Don’t know what you mean.” He responded coolly, thumbing through a book that was either a history of the lands of the North or a book of state secrets.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“The name Beracek mean anything to you?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Not to me, no.” He shuffled almost imperceptibly in his seat. “But I’ve heard Cleaver curse that name.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Mind if I look around then? Someone here knows him.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Dijkstra’s shoulders sagged. “He’s dead. Been dead.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What do you know?” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You’ll find her in the staff quarters. Since the man you’re looking for is dead, no use swinging that sword on her before you hear what she has to say. She’s valuable; I need her here. She’d been impersonating Beracek for the last month. Luchezara— she’s a Doppler.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt narrowed his eyes. “Won’t your colleagues be upset you’re harboring something that owes them money?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“So long as you keep your own trap shut and say he’s dead, they’ll be satisfied and divvy up his assets. Like I said. What happened is her business. She just happens to be a valuable part of mine. Besides…” he sighed, and softened a bit, standing to replace a ledger onto a shelf. “Couldn’t help but get attached to that thing.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He explained that she had come to Novigrad first in a group of dwarven traders. She had to flee once they realized after the arduous journey that not only did they all survive, they picked up an extra along the way. And none of them had a twin. She fled to the sewers, and came upon a fresh dead body. A frail, unfortunate half-elf girl, strangled. Somebody’s great sin from Crippled Kate’s; someone the garrison police wouldn’t bother to avenge. Not uncommon in Novigrad. Dijkstra found her when checking up on his underground stash. She had charmed the bodyguard instinct out of Bart, and was standing there naked, pitiful, plastered in mud and shivering like a newborn piglet. “Glad I ain’t a father.” Dijkstra shuddered. “I never handle shit like that well.” He took her in, in return for her honesty; and, once he knew of her true nature, appointed her finely in return for her keen ears and ability to blend in. She also had a magpie’s eye for jewels and gold, which he said she lifted from the homes of the wealthy on the side and to which he turned a blind eye, so long as she never got caught. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“So she got caught?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“In a manner of speaking.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt found her room, and knocked lightly. The voice on the other side was timid. “...Sigi?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Witcher.” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He heard a shuffling on the other side of the door. The unmistakable unsheathing of a knife. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I’m not going to hurt you.” Dopplers were supposed to be kind, and loathe to violence. He wondered what triggered her panic. “I just want to know what happened to the merchant.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She opened the door a crack and peered up at him with one tired, watery grey eye. Like a murky crystal. She met his equally impenetrable gaze, took a breath, and opened the door. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He walked in and gestured to her hand behind her back. “You can put the knife down, Luchezara.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I haven’t felt safe to do that in a while. I won’t try anything… I… just want to hold on to it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Be my guest.” Geralt took a look around and whistled low. Nicely appointed. A couple of overflowing jewelry boxes, and signs that even this lowly supposed barmaid was waited on by servants. “Must be real valuable to Dijkstra.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yeah, well…” She shrugged, eager to get him out of her hair. “He treats me like a spoiled child, too. Feels sorry for me, I think. He’s a good man, despite everything. Even though to your lot, I'm just a creature.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Never said that.” He took a seat on one of the ottomans. “I’m not here to kill anyone, or drive anyone away. I </span>
  </em>
  <span>just</span>
  <em>
    <span> want to know what happened to Beracek.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She exhaled and the tension released from her body. Geralt had known a few dopplers in his time. When they made sudden movements he swore he could see their appearance blur.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you the one who buried him?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes.” The knife trembled in her hands. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Are you the one who killed him?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She burst into tears; he didn’t expect it, and he wasn’t the best at calming hysterical people. So he sat there quietly while she sobbed. There were a couple of richly dressed porcelain dolls on a shelf, with bright red cheeks and glassy eyes. A pretty shell, stuffed on the inside with straw and fabric remnants. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I thought he loved me.” She finally blubbered, roughly wiping the sorrow from her cheeks. They were bright red. Her eyes were wet and glassy. “He said he loved me.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Did you love him?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I wanted to…. I tried.” She didn’t know if she really could. “He was a regular at the bath house. Soon he told me he came there so often to see me. “Sigi told me not to get involved with merchants. That I deserved better, I guess. But no one ever looked at me and told me I was lovely, before him.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Well. You were wearing someone else’s skin.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“She had no need for it anymore. I am </span>
  </em>
  <span>me</span>
  <em>
    <span>.” Her sobs ceased and she fixed him with a determined glower. “I feel sorry for that girl, believe me. I still see her memories, or what’s left of them. I live with them and I make my own life here. It’s hardly my fault that you humans wouldn’t see me as your equal otherwise. A human woman puts on a dress and makeup-- she puts on her costume to be seen as a woman. A man puts on his man costume. They behave like men, and like women. If this is the form I choose, how am I any different than them?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I take it Beracek didn’t agree when he found out.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Luchezara sniffled, and her voice became thick again. “No.... he… he invited me to his villa. I’d never been there before. It was beautiful. I thought I would live there forever; that he was inviting me to stay. One morning he tried to put a silver necklace around my neck. It burned me; I woke up. I screamed… I started shifting, trying to get the silver away from my skin. Half-elf… human… dwarf… deer…” She pulled at one of her gold chains to reveal the red and purple scar around her collarbone. “When the necklace broke, and I became </span>
  </em>
  <span>me</span>
  <em>
    <span> again… he put his hands around my neck instead. He called me a liar, a schemer… thought that Dijkstra was using me to blackmail him. We backed into his writing desk. My hand fell on the letter opener.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I don’t understand.” Geralt interjected “I’ve never known a Doppler to kill.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“It was her.” Luchezara explained. “It all triggered a memory, one that wasn’t mine.” It was the reflex of a Crippled Kate’s girl, one that had fought off violent men all of her life. “I felt the metal of the letter opener only when it was already square in his head. Then I smelt the blood, heard… heard the horrible gurgling from his throat... “ </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She stood and paced the room. She picked up a plush cloth to wipe the sweat and tears from her face. “I sat next to his body for hours. I cared for him. I didn’t know why he would do that to me… I didn’t know how I could do that to </span>
  </em>
  <span>him</span>
  <em>
    <span>…” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You gave him the best burial you could.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes… I stayed in the home for a few days after.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Then you went back to Dijkstra’s?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Then his family came home… a wife, and kids. Two little boys, shouting ‘Papa, papa!’, you know... The guilt overwhelmed me. I couldn’t be the reason they lost their father. I thought the only way to make what I had done right was to…”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“To become Beracek.” So she had a knack for masquerading as corpses.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I started to enjoy it. The plush life, the family, the money...Only it was more than just being a father. It was the whole business. Shelves full of ledgers. Soon I’d spent everything. I bungled the business. I remembered that Dijkstra had some friends who had money to finance.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Shady friends.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Yes well… I’m still new to this whole ‘society’ thing. I panicked, and I abandoned the family and the business. Everything.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“And so Beracek disappeared without a trace.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Luchezara nodded. “For a long time I wondered if this proved what people liked to say about non-humans. That we’re violent, bring chaos, with atavistic minds.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I think you put your trust in someone who didn’t deserve it.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Truly?” She smiled slightly, with relief.</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“I also think you’re naive. You should have listened to Dijkstra. You want to be among humans, like humans, but you assumed that humans are like dopplers. But we’re not so harmless. Without those residual memories, you would be dead.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“You think my heart is good, still?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“What else do you remember about the life you took on?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She wiped her nose on the plush cloth. “Her name was Lia. From the country, dunno where. She had a baby she left there, and came to Novigrad to send money back. She could play the fiddle like a professional. Sometimes, I can too. Other times, my fingers only spasm on the strings. Sometimes it feels like those memories are fading.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Try to hold on to them.” He stood up, groaning slightly. He’d recently taken a forktail to the knees. “Clearly you need some of that sense to keep alive around here. And one more thing--” He gripped the door on his way out. “Probably best to quit stealing.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>She grinned a bit mischievously from her still-puffy face. “No victim, no crime.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>He snorted. “You’ve got a lot to learn about humans.”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And there are still people who don’t know Dijkstra’s dead, so long as she keeps his memory alive.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Boring.” Lambert declared. “Where was all the action?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You asked for the story.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“At least </span>
  <em>
    <span>try</span>
  </em>
  <span> to embellish it, Geralt.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thought it was plenty interesting.” Eskel put in. “Like a mystery book.”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Reading</span>
  </em>
  <span> is boring, too.” Lambert took one more shot of whatever pungent liquid they had been served. He stood up and gripped the towel around him. “I need to get some food before I mummify myself with alcohol. You guys in?” He didn’t wait for an answer. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His two comrades followed him out. “Why is he the only person who can insult you, and yet you still want to spend time with him?” Eskel shook his head, and Geralt laughed. They disappeared into separate changing rooms. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel doused himself in cold water and began dressing in familiar silence. He was not boisterous or provocative like Lambert. He didn’t have women and confidantes hanging constantly on his arms like Geralt. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Well, not since… </span>
  </em>
  <span>He tousled his damp hair so that it obscured his scar. There was peace in the silence. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he jumped when there was a knock. Grey quartz eyes peeked at him from the crack in the door. “Sorry--” He mumbled automatically as he fumbled with the buttons on his shirt. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Why did you apologize??</span>
  </em>
  <span> He chastised himself. His face became red again, and redder when he saw who it was. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She smiled. Her jaw was square, and her round cheeks impeded her smile, but it almost looked wider that way. Her eyes were round and had a sparkle to them when they narrowed. Candlelight danced on her jewelry. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I hope I didn’t scare you.” She said softly. “Witchers aren’t supposed to be jumpy. But I’m used to startling vulnerable, half-dressed men.” She waited for him to laugh at the joke. He didn’t; he was having too much trouble with a lace on his shirt. Luchezara stepped in and delicately threaded and tied it, and patted him on the chest. “You remind me of a bear, you know? You don’t see that a lot in a city.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Heard a lot of things. Never that one before.” He laughed a little through his nose, like he was afraid to breathe. “Did… did you need something?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Never heard that one before, working here.” She laughed too. “I hope it’s not too forward, but I overheard your conversation. I just wanted to say… your dark-haired friend sounds like a whoreson.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel burst into unexpected laughter. “No, uh… he talks like that because we’ve known him almost his whole life. Like brothers.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well he’s wrong.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“About?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re not ugly.” Luchezara said declaratively. “I happen to think you look very sweet. Dashing, even.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Dashing?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’d have to get to know you better. Geralt says not to judge just on appearances. But I’m confident in dashing.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She walked towards the door, and only then did he straighten his slightly aching neck. He had been leaning down to meet her eyes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Miss Luchezara!” He found himself blurting out when she was halfway out the door. “Maybe, in a day or two… when this hangover has worn off… would you like to go for a walk with me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A walk?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is that bad? I thought it… sounded peaceful.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She smiled sweetly at him. “I could use a little peace. See you then. I’ll be here.” </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Afternoon Constitutional</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eskel drags himself out of a hangover to meet Luchezara. They talk about the difference between man and monster. Eskel feels at home with her words in a way of which he never felt deserving. Events in Novigrad begin to eat at his newfound hope: where can home be, when the only difference between man and monster is who is hunter and who is hunted?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It seemed like it had taken longer for the alcohol haze to leave Eskel’s mind than usual. Witchers lived a long time, but it seemed like he couldn’t spring back so easily from a life of debauchery anymore. He was always the lightweight anyway, despite his size. How did the night end? He remembered Geralt walked him back to the inn he was staying in, or he walked Geralt back, or they both tried to keep each other upright and barely walking towards somewhere. Lambert left for somewhere with something that in Eskel’s blurred vision was vaguely in the shape of a person. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He rolled out of bed with a groan, discovering a new, deep bruise on his back that either didn’t exist until Lambert bet he couldn’t take a wooden chair to the back, or had been brewing since he bumped into a rotfiend less than a week previous right before it burst.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Just one more for the tally…</span>
  </em>
  <span> He thought, glancing at his reflection in the too-small and dusty hammered metal mirror across from the too-small dusty bed. His skin was already striped with scars like a Zangvebar horse. His face was still sallow from the night out, and his eyes were ringed with dark circles, one of which he hoped wasn’t a black eye. The front of his hair was plastered to his forehead, while the back splayed in every direction. The scars on his face caught his eye, as they always inevitably did several times a day. But it was the first time he didn’t repeat his own grim self-condemnation for how they looked or for how he got them. He remembered </span>
  <em>
    <span>her</span>
  </em>
  <span> words. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Dashing. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He remembered what he asked of her. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Shit. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel peeked his head out from the door and caught a maid by surprise. “Excuse me, miss...What time is it?” he croaked.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“A little after noon.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sighed with relief. “I still have some time.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What?” She was carrying a jug of water and a basin. He gestured to it with his brows.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is that clean?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He reached out with his hands and took it, and then locked his door. “I’ll pay for it--” he added after a moment. He heard her huff and march off. “And can you send up water for a bath?” He heard her huff again. “Thank you--!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He used some of the water to wash his face, but immediately guzzled the rest as if he hadn’t had a cup of water in days. Had he? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The bathing water finally came nearly an hour later. He was gracious about it and apologized for his behavior. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This morning or last night?” One of the maids asked. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Your geriatric friend is out there in the hallway,” the other sneered. “You’re going to be charged for two beds and a premium on top, if he decides to vomit on the rugs. Or if he’s dead.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt.</span>
  </em>
  <span> So he had carried Eskel to the inn. He just hadn’t left. “That’s uh…. Just fine.” He went outside the room as they were filling the bath with hot water to retrieve his friend. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wolf,” he tapped him with his foot. “You awake?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The other man’s voice was a low growl “...No…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Pulling up under Geralt’s arms, Eskel dragged him into the room as if he was a dead body. In a way, he was shamefully hiding his friend as if he was hiding a body. He hefted Geralt onto the bed. “You can stay here for the rest of the day. You’re scaring the staff. They were already wary of a witcher staying here. Now it looks like we’re multiplying.” He nodded to the maids as they left. They scowled in response. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What…” Geralt mumbled to the ceiling while his friend stripped and got into the bath, “You’re not gonna come back for it tonight?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re drunk. Still?” Not too drunk to laugh at his own jokes. “And I’ll be back.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Because you’re respectful.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel sank under the water to rinse the grease and night from his hair and resurfaced. “No, because I’m seeing a friend.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’ve never asked Lambert or me to ‘take a walk’ with you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pushed the water out of his ears to make sure he heard correctly. “How did you know that?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You wouldn’t stop talking about it.” Geralt sat up unsteadily to remove his boots, forgetting momentarily they were fastened by laces, and cursed himself. “What she said about you, how she looked, what you were going to say to her… Lambert hit you with a chair to try and shut you up.” So that was the chair he remembered. “But you didn’t. So he went somewhere else.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And you didn’t?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I had had more than either of you at that point.” Geralt explained, finally kicking his bots away from him and sinking back into the bed. “If I tried to leave at that point I wouldn’t have made it farther than the alley. You have an… annoying sense of responsibility, and I knew you wouldn’t leave me there. Besides… it was nice to listen to you that excited about a woman, considering all the shit you put me through about Yen--” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t put you </span>
  <em>
    <span>through shit</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” Eskel interrupted. “I just want you to have some sense. Because you’re my brother. And I care about you.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Annoying sense of responsibility…”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh, fuck off. Biding your time to criticize me the same?” He stood and started getting dressed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No. Wouldn’t do that to you. Besides, I already know her. I like her. You need someone with you. Someone like Yen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel laughed. “She’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>like Yennefer. She’s kind, and she’s considerate.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Geralt was not in a place to defend his lover’s honor. Although somehow he felt as though she would find out she left a slight uncountered anyway. “You barely know her. She’s not a hill girl. She doesn’t weave diadems out of wildflowers and she’s not going to greet you with a roast chicken every night.” He waved his arms weakly in the air, as if trying to paint an accurate picture of the woman. “She’s a vexling. She’s ambitious, and clever. She also killed a man.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And so have I. And so have you. And so has Yennefer. Probably. And you told us she did that by accident.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She could have lied. It was just no skin off my back either way. I know you can handle yourself if she decides to attack you with a hot poker. I’ve just seen a lot of men fall in love with non-humans. They project what they want them to be, because the non-human is trapped, and can’t fight back, or because they have the power to transform themselves. But they don’t always want to. It always seems to end the same, too: either I kill it, or it kills him.” Geralt’s voice evened out and he adopted a kinder tone. “We both know how the Path is. What it takes from us. I know we seek it out everywhere, try to get it back. And I know you’ve got a bigger heart than most. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel took the words in for a moment. But only a moment. “Son of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bitch...</span>
  </em>
  <span>I gave you the same speech after you met Yennefer.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was so profound that I remembered it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But you didn’t abide by it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You didn’t ask me to. Anyway, have fun. I’ll be here, clinging to life. If you make any noise when you get back, I’ll kill you in your sleep.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel laughed silently in response while shrugging on his armored jacket. He chided himself for wondering whether he, a witcher who hadn’t planned on taking an afternoon stroll with a woman, didn’t have a nicer set of clothes with him. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Oh well…</span>
  </em>
  <span> It wasn’t like it would make him look any better, although he looked slightly more refreshed than before. He remembered what Geralt had said: even humans like to hide in disguises. He was no different.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He walked to the bathhouse with such tension in his chest that once he reached the door, he had to remember to stand up straight. As he knocked, he remembered his youth at Kaer Morhen, when sometimes they would be permitted to socialize with the children in nearby settlements. He’d take a liking to a farmer’s daughter, knock politely to ask his permission to spend time with her… one look at his eyes, and the door would be shut in his face. He thought again about what Geralt had said about her reasons for taking the form of a half-elf-- that humans only accept their own. He was one of their own, until suddenly he wasn’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She would understand that more than most. She was someone’s beloved, until she ceased, in their eyes, to be </span>
  <em>
    <span>someone</span>
  </em>
  <span> and became </span>
  <em>
    <span>something. </span>
  </em>
  <span>All around Novigrad was becoming hostile to non-humans. At least she would know, regardless of how much they liked each other, that there would be someone she could call on to protect her. If he was in Novigrad, that is. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So lost in thought that he didn’t realize it had been a while since he knocked. He was pulled out of his reverie only when a slat on the door was slammed open and a pair of dark, narrow eyes peered at him from inside. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I am here for… Miss Luchezara.” Eskel stumbled out. In front of him, the eyes became wider, larger, lighter; the brow became delicate, and the tops of the cheeks rose in a smile. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“One moment!” A feminine and familiar voice alerted. The figure disappeared from the door. More minutes passed. He looked around him and tried to stand in the shadow. Didn’t want to appear like a man going alone to a bathhouse in the middle of the day. Even though he was. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She appeared again, this time more than eyes, as she opened the door and shut it behind her. Before he realized she was carrying two large mugs, she cast one into his hands. “Hold this-- I mean that’s for you.” With her free hand, she locked the doors. “Sorry, when I’m in there alone it’s better to answer the door there as a man.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re there alone?” He smelled the mug; tea, something herbal, slightly sweet. His cheeks burned a little, thinking of how he must have appeared to her the day before. But she did say </span>
  <em>
    <span>dashing. </span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well… you-know-who is gone because he got in over his head… So I'm the only one what lives there now.” She shrugged.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is it alright to leave it?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Perfectly alright. It's big and lonely in there, and it smells a bit of wet man-hair all the time.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He laughed. “I know a place like that. I call it home too, for the moment.” It was resonant and deep, like the radiating magic she could sense from him. She liked it. “Drink that,” She advised. “I figured you would need it, from yesterday. And it’s a little cold out...” She set off, and he loped after her until they set a good pace. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Every time I go drinking with those two, I swear I’ll never touch the stuff again. Yet the next scaly beast I come across, I have to drink to forget again.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Have you known each other long?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“All our lives. Known Geralt the longest. Became witchers together.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Really… so you’re family, then? You do look similar.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He shook his head. “Not technically. But since we were both moulded the same way, it makes sense that we seem similar.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Where did you grow up?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Kaer Morhen… fortress up north. It was a witcher school before. Now it’s just home.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And before that? What happened to your family?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The question took him aback a bit. She noticed. “Sorry if that’s too forward… I’m still learning about how to </span>
  <em>
    <span>be</span>
  </em>
  <span> in this body. I find it strange that there are things people will not talk about.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s not that, it’s just… I don’t know. I know I had parents. I don’t know where they lived, beyond the fact that they were hill people. I remember a song my mother used to sing. But I don’t remember her face.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She must have looked like you.” She suggested with her face raised to the mug. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Akh…. hope not.” He laughed in that way again. She laughed, and spit a mouthful of tea out onto the cobblestones in surprise. “But not knowing where I came from… it’s made me closer to people who really matter, in a way.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That’s nice.” Luchezara said softly, holding the mug close and warming her hands. She was wearing a luxurious looking light green coat, but wore it with none of the pomp of certain other fancy dressers he knew. “We dopplers come into the world quite rootless. It makes me hopeful that I can be someone meaningful, regardless.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Really? I didn’t know that.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Go and study harder, witcher. If we were pack creatures, we’d have no need for mimicry.” She affixed him with a wry smile. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why join human society? If you could go anywhere, be anything-- within reason-- why assimilate into creatures that war, harm each other… that cause such unnecessary suffering?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She grunted slightly, haughtily, as if she had heard that question a million times before. “What would you be, if you could, then, Eskel?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He shrugged. “Haven’t had to think about that before. Maybe a bear-- nice to eat for half a year, and sleep the other half. I’m quite attached to goats, actually. Have a few at Kaer Morhen.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pressed a finger into his shoulder. “You said bear because of what I said last night.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Maybe. Maybe it changed how I thought of myself somewhat.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re blushing.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s the tea.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Right.” She giggled. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He leaned in and playfully shoved her with his side. “Didn’t answer my question.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her lower lip trembled, and she raised a trembling hand to her forehead and feigned a faint. “Oh… such a painful question…!” He reflexively jerked to catch her, but she righted, and laughed. “It’s a question with an obvious answer! If you’ve ever travelled with a group of deer around a lake you’ll know they aren’t much for conversation. They don’t enjoy reading, and they can’t protect themselves from drowners.” He rolled his eyes; of course she was right. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She continued, more somber, with a wistful look in her eyes that were trained on the merchants in a nearby square who were selling all manner of colorful fabrics and metals. “Humanoids have this incredible emptiness in them. Dopplers have it too. A terrible sentience. A horrible, beautiful contrarian ache to belong to someone, something, but be individual as well. It hurts. It hurts every day. But I wouldn’t give it up for anything.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel was silent. The same ache deep in his chest became lodged in his throat. When Lambert arrived at Kaer Morhen, he and Geralt were already trainees. Lambert wailed at night for his family, alone, like an abandoned puppy. Although he came to care about him in time, when he cried Eskel felt nothing but resentment for what Lambert had lost, what he himself never had. He came to the fortress with no memories. Geralt arrived without even a name. Vesemir had given him that. Eskel supposed that was why they seemed the most attached to Kaer Morhen. </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“Humanoids and dopplers are the only creatures that feel an unshakeable need to transform themselves, to fit in and stand out…” She parted her coat and pulled at all of the gold and jewels around her neck. “Can you believe some old bat called me gaudy?” She stopped in front of a torch and held her hand, adorned in rings and bracelets, out to him. The color of the metal reflected onto her hand and made it look as though it was radiating brilliant heat, too. “Why hold back? Why deny yourself this joy?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She was, of course, speaking rhetorically about herself. They had circled back near the bathhouse. Geralt’s (or, his own) words echoed in his mind. </span>
  <em>
    <span>We both know how the Path is. What it takes from us. I know we seek it out everywhere, try to get it back. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He took her hand, unable to stop himself. He assured himself she could run if she wanted, it wasn’t far off. But she didn’t. Her hand was cold compared to his, shockingly cold at first-- it was covered in metal, after all-- and he hesitated for a moment.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She mistook his uncertainty for something else. “Were you afraid… that I wouldn’t be real? That you would reach out and grasp a claw…? I…” She started to retract her hand, hiding her little heartbreak. In her heart of hearts, she must have expected it, and she reminded herself thusly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>While she was talking, her hand rapidly warmed in his, and he pressed it closer to him, and tighter. “No…! Luchezara, I… I was too enchanted. Forgot it was cold.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She started to cry, despite herself. She reached up to wipe her tears and inadvertently hit herself in the face with the mug. She laughed pitifully through it. “If only half-elves could have three fucking hands…” He let go of her hand, reaching out to brush the tear from her cheek himself. “Well, between us we have two, so…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Giggling between hard sniffles, she swatted his hand away playfully. “If you don’t stop you’ll get snot on your sleeves.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You wouldn’t believe what I scrubbed off them last week. And my fashion isn’t as valuable as yours.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s not about fashion,” she chided him, smiling through blotchy and bleary eyes. “It’s about what you surround yourself with bringing you happiness.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It keeps me safe, I suppose. Happiness isn’t high on the list of witcher survival skills.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shuffled her feet on the cobblestones. They were lake blue satin slippers. They were scuffed; they had clearly been danced in. With a trembling gentle intake of breath, she squeezed his forearm and asked him, “Were you… were you happy here with me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His reassuring smile was contagious. “I think I was. I am. I want it to be so.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Me too.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They stood there, inches apart in childish, besotted silence for a long moment. He kissed her tenderly on the cheek, and she turned to brush her lips against his. With one hand she caressed his cheek and traced the outline of his lips where the scar had malformed it. She could feel the muscles in his cheek tense. “I like how it feels,” she assured. “I can tell you worry over it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They broke, and she fingered a chain on her neck. “So I suppose you’ll be out of Novigrad before too long?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He cleared his throat to try to gain composure. “Yes, ah… not many monsters here that aren’t human.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Well…” She passed off her empty mug to him and unfastened the chain. At its end was a simple gold ring inlaid with turquoise. “I know you don’t look like a ‘gaudy’ man-- and lean down so that I can put this on you, Eskel--” He did as he was told, and she fixed it on his neck and whispered in his ear. “I hope this can bring you some happiness in that dreary job. As much as it makes me happy to think of you wearing it, and thinking of me.” He nodded, and couldn't help but to kiss her again. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She took back the mugs gently and gave him one final kiss on the cheek. “You need some rest. When you’re in Novigrad next, come see me. And bring me something nice.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I will.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They parted, and as he walked off back to his cold little room at the inn to sleep on the floor next to his comatose friend, she yelled out brashly and comedically, “And I don’t know if Geralt told you, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>no silver! I hate that shit!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel thought about Kaer Morhen, its previous destruction during the siege. How they had outgrown it, and how no one but him still seemed so attached to it. He realized Geralt and Lambert all had other warm fires, warm arms to call home. They didn’t need Kaer Morhen anymore. Maybe she would be his, in Novigrad. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sight of a charred pire in the middle of the square brought him back to reality. Soon rumors would reach the witch hunters, and Novigrad would no longer be safe for dopplers, and then not even for witchers. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. To Steal Away in the Night</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Luchezara and Eskel grow closer farther away. But nearer to home, the distance between the Novigrad authorities and Luchezara is narrowing. Only one road left out of Novigrad, now, but there is no way to know where it leads.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for sticking with this as it has gone from a one-shot to a multi-chapter plot on a whim!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>It had been months since Luchezara had seen Eskel, but only weeks since she had received a letter from him.  It seemed every time he reached a new village, wrestling with a slew of monstrous bothers, he took the time to sit down and write. He paid, hopefully not dearly, for a messenger to take it to Novigrad. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She would pop open the wax seal immediately. The letters always smelled of some kind of grass and sunshine. He misguidedly always attempted to press flowers into the folds of paper, which succeeded in leaving nothing but a moldering, inky imprint. Still, it smelled of where he had been. It reminded her of somewhere else other than the increasingly cramped city of Novigrad. Luchezara would kick her heels up on the desk of the late Dijkstra and read. Eskel’s handwriting was surprisingly neat, as if someone had put the time in to teach him penmanship as well as parrying. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The letters revealed him to be a quick wit, and funny, when he wanted to be. They exchanged little drawings— his quite detailed of the flora, fauna, and endearing monsters he crossed. She would scribble vulgar cartoons about city life. She smiled and laughed alone in that cavernous building, with only those letters for company. Even though he was far away, Eskel was the only person she interacted with without several layers of disguise. Recently some Redanian patriot found out the owner of the bathhouse should have been dead and wasted no time in spreading the information. She kept the doors locked almost always, to keep the nosy away as well as the stench from the pires. The letters were her only company. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She certainly didn’t tell him so, though he asked. After what had happened to her, it was difficult to know if she could trust him. Beracek turned out to be dangerous, but he at least didn’t know a thousand and one ways to kill her kind. She would manage on her own as best she could. All she needed was a keen ear to the ground. But it was difficult to hear over the agonized shrieks of the latest victims of the aptly-named Eternal Flame. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Address the letters now to this address,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>She would add in the postscript, without qualification, for weeks on end before returning to the bathhouse for more supplies in the dead of night. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>At the end of each letter to her he would sketch a simple map and write: </span>
  <em>
    <span>if things become dangerous, get to Kaer Morhen. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Well, she knew Novigrad like the back of her hand, and nought about this strange northern fortress.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Soon it was too dangerous to be seen returning to the bathhouse. All of the non-humans she knew had gone missing— fled, or ended up ash and bone brushed away by street cleaners. She decided it was her last night at the bathhouse. The whole city had learned of Dijkstra’s death, and were eager to expose the one who had pretended to his urban throne. An anti-shapeshifter craze was sweeping the city. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She stuffed only a few of her many outfits and enough jewelry to help her survive on the streets into a pack and around her neck, along with Eskel’s letters, and looked out on her home for the last time. She had gotten lucky: found a reasonable patron and lived like nobility. Not bad, for a forest creature. She almost laughed, but the deep pain that had settled in her stomach kept the laugh from rising to her lips. She had everything she ever wanted, and now she could not even fight for it. She had sheltered in her bunker too long. It was too late to mount a defense; and, she reminded herself, she did not endure what she had only to die at the grubby hands of a witch hunter. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It made her angry. Tears stung at her eyelids at her last walk away from the bathhouse. The wind carried the preaching of some witch hunters. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>They’re clever beasts…. kill your wife and cuddle up in your bed, they will, and you’ll not be the wiser. Strangle your child in the night and replace him. They’ll steal away in the night with your heirlooms. They replicate like a pox…! They won’t be sated until they replace us all! </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The crowd around them cheered. It sounded like the shriek of one large monster. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>If you believe your home harbors a Doppler you have an obligation to take it to the Witch Hunters for destruction. They will play on your kindness, your love… they will resist! They will deny it! This must not deter you! </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She spent nights in this or that attic, at this or that address above this or that tavern or brothel with suspicious townsfolk who took suspicious payment in the form of old Banknotes signed by Dijkstra before his death and the occasional solid gold bracelet. Each night she decided what next piece she was prepared to let go of. She hadn’t a jeweler’s eye, and valued jewels only so much as whether they brought her any joy or held a memory. The one thing she refused to offer up was a gold-hilted knife, given jokingly by Dijkstra after her accidental murder of the merchant. She didn’t find it funny at the time; now, she was grateful. She tucked it between one of her stockings and its garter ribbon, and hoped she would stay safe enough to forget it was there. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara was running out of collateral to pay innkeepers and messengers. She was running out of kind strangers who didn’t ask any questions. More than that, she was running out of parchment and ink. It was the only thing she told him about in the letter, but she included a miniature portrait of herself that she had commissioned when she first got her hands on some money. It was a beautiful little thing, layered lacquer on a base of mother of pearl. It almost glittered in the light. When she first held it in her hands, it seemed as though she lost hours looking at it. It wasn’t like a mirror, which would change when she did. This little image was forever; it was the only evidence that she had even existed, if and when she was forced to disappear and take on a new guise. Even if she did not trust him with her life, she trusted him to respect her memory. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She slipped it into the envelope with the letter, with no more instructions than to keep the portrait, and that she could not write more. She included no return address, sealed the envelope with some cheap beeswax, and handed it off to a traveler she paid with one of her last gold rings. It was fine weather for an emotional parting; rain had oppressed the city for over half of the day, and the back streets had turned to mud. Shrouded in a cloak, she walked back to her perch-of-the-night… only to find the door locked. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shook it with her fist, and it would not budge. “Hello…?” She pressed her palm into the door with increasing force and urgency. Temple guards were heading her way. “O-open the door…. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Please</span>
  </em>
  <span> open the door…!!” It was a half-whisper, half-shout. She had thought that maybe the guards were only passing by, but soon she could see the glint of their halberds reflecting off of the torch in front of the house. They were coming straight towards her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The shutters above her opened, and her previously gracious host crowed, “That’s ‘er, boys! The changeling! Come back to cut us all down!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Almost all of her remaining belongings were in that house. They locked her up to take it all, and they would make sure that she was never able to reclaim it. Luchezara railed against the door with her fists; all of the built up anger from months of hiding had finally burst out of her. “And yet you took a fugitive monster’s coin, didn’t you bitch?!? Then took the rest of my coin out of the ‘goodness of your heart!’”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop where you are!”</span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her rage would have to wait.   </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In an attempt to pivot away from the door, she slipped and fell into the mud; yet she was still faster than the guards, who were trying not to do the same in full plate and heavy weapons. She fell several more times while ripping herself away from the grappling arms of angry townsfolk (who knew a mass scapegoating campaign would unite the city?) but finally put several meters between her and the guards. But she did not have several meters worth of ideas of where to flee next. Soon the back street would end. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Hands struck out from the alleyway and pulled her out of the way. She fought against them first, but was released immediately. Dumbstruck for a moment, she barely registered the figure’s words. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Trying to lose the temple guard? This way--!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara couldn’t get a good view on who had offered her a way out, other than that it must have been a woman. With only a clear view of her feet, Luchezara allowed the other woman to spirit her away to somewhere unknown, but safe. They wandered down more alleyways, up and down stairs, and through kitchens and shops. The race ended in an alley much the same as where it started. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thank you,” Luchezara breathed, releasing a sob in the exhale. She threw off the hood of her cloak to allow the rain to cool her forehead. She got a good look at her savior for the first time. She was a stocky woman in a standard dark cloak, with red hair, full lips, and brown eyes. And completely unfamiliar. “Why did you save me…?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I wanted to see you with my own eyes.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wh… what do you mean?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The woman pressed forward into her. Suddenly she seemed very tall. “I said I wanted to see you. See the </span>
  <em>
    <span>thing</span>
  </em>
  <span> what took the body of my best friend Lia. I wanted to see you scared. I wanted to see you running.” She was pressing Luchezara towards the middle of the street.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I...I don’t know what you’re--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Of course you do. This is a long time in coming. Thought you were untouchable with Sigi Reuven. Us girls at Crippled Kate’s thought so too. But we waited. We knew it wouldn’t last forever. When the witch hunters turned on your lot we came up with a plan.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The woman stopped and fixed Luchezara with a glare that seemed to bore into the back of her skull. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Please… you wouldn’t do anything to me, would you… I have…. I have some wealth-- in a house, from where I ran…! I can--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>I don’t want your stolen money.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” She hissed. “I just want to know something.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Anything…!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How did she die?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know, uh…” A memory flashed in her mind. A man’s fingers. Beracek. Her throat. Lia’s throat. A pen knife Lia fumbled for futilely. The letter opener in Beracek’s office. “She… she was strangled…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Where did you find her?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her face burned with shame, even in the wet chill of the evening. “In the sewers… northwest side of the city…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The woman took a sharp, pained, and angry breath in. “And when you came across Lia’s body when you were crawling around that sewer like a rat… did you bring her up to bury her?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What…?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I </span>
  <em>
    <span>asked you</span>
  </em>
  <span>… Did you </span>
  <em>
    <span>bury her?</span>
  </em>
  <span>”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luchezara tried her best to meet the other woman’s eyes, to appeal one last time for any kind of mercy. “...No…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>All she saw was her best friend Lia. Lia who loved to dance and was an expert at the fiddle. Lia who had a little boy out in the countryside that she yearned to hold again. “So you were here, under the blue sky, enjoying a cushy life in her stolen body while Lia rots with the city refuse…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You don’t understand... ! I </span>
  <em>
    <span>know</span>
  </em>
  <span> her, or ah… I share her memories, I honor her life--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I understand plenty. I understand so long as her bones are in Novigrad, you aren’t welcome here.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara sobbed. “I-if you’ll just secure me safe passage out of the city, I’ll be gone! You’ll never see me again, please…!” She gripped the woman’s shoulders desperately. Their coldness stiffened and stung her hands. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s already arranged.” The woman muttered, and shoved Luchezara hard enough to knock her away to the ground. She stepped back, as the doppler desperately tried to raise herself from the muck. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Do it now!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> The woman shouted. A man’s voice shouted in acknowledgement. Luchezara heard the sound of a sword slicing rope. And felt a weighted net descend from the rooftops onto her body. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She struggled wildly with the last of her strength, and transformed, out of instinct, into whatever form might free her. Deer, halfling, wolf, dwarf, young bear, and back to herself again. She shrieked. The struggle only sucked her deeper into the mud and left her body more tangled in the rope and what was left of her belongings. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She’s a real one, ain’t she!” The male voice whistled. She saw two shadows standing over her. Her eyes rolled wildly around as she attempted to focus while every part of her body was writhing in panic.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sure. Don’t give a shit.” The woman said. He passed something to her. Luchezara heard the sound of coins rattling in a pouch. “I didn’t do this for the money. I did it because I wanted to.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Business is business.” He shrugged. Her shadow drifted away, and he kneeled closer. He whistled in a sing-song tone as he looked her over, “And in Novigrad, business is booming…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I have money…!” She repeated again, to yet another person, desperately. “I can pay you… just release me…!!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He gathered the ends of the net and began to drag her towards a covered carriage. There was a cage inside. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“I’ll earn more </span>
  <em>
    <span>with you</span>
  </em>
  <span> than you could ever pay me, little one.” He told her, so easily it almost sounded reassuring. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wh-what…?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Time to sleep,” he declared, “You’ll feel much better in the morning.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The last sensation she recalled was a blow from a cudgel.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. A Life for a Life</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Luchezara finds a way out of Novigrad and into a cage; meanwhile Eskel arrives in Novigrad to track her and her bloody trail to Kaer Morhen.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Luchezara woke to the cry of a hawk. It felt as though it pierced right through the deep welt on the side of her head and echoed in her brain. She opened her eyes, and saw no buildings. No city walls. Nothing was between her and the sky but iron bars. She caught her bearings slowly; the coming winter wind flowed freely through the cage, barely large enough to curl up and sleep, and it's floor felt like ice. So she wasn’t on the ground; there was something, or someone in another cage below her. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She had at least been allowed to keep her clothing. The rest of her jewelry had been ripped from her body. There was soreness in her fingers and wrists from where it must have been roughly pulled away or cut. She ran a hand up her mud-caked stockings. So the knife was still there. She gripped the bars and pressed her cheeks to them in order to see as much of her surroundings as possible. More cages were stacked in the open clearing in what seemed like the middle of a steppe. Somewhere in Velen or just north of Novigrad, it must have been. A siren was wailing painfully in a shallow tub of water. A sylvan was knocking its horns on the bars of its cage nearby. Across from it was a dead godling. Many relicts, she realized, including her. A third of them were dead. She suspected the stench was kept at bay by the chill in the air. Her blood turned cold as well. There was a tent propped up in the middle of it all, where a figure sat in the shadows and read something. He laughed. It was her captor and her letters. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ah,” The man said, kicking his boots off of a small table and standing. He folded up one of her letters under his arm and walked out into the sunlight in front of her. “You’re awake. Didn’t I tell you that you’d feel much better? Fresh air, sunshine. That’s what your kind like, isn’t it?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> “I don’t.” She murmured grimly, feeling too sick to even attempt to be threatening. “I feel like my skull was cracked open with a cudgel.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You see, I checked, and double checked,” He tutted. He was dressed in hunters’ clothes, but with a colorful wealthy merchant’s cap. His face was ruddy and covered by a carefully shaped dark mustache and beard. He wore some dark, circular shades over his eyes. Fortuitous for him; if she wanted to take his form, it was best to take a deep look into his eyes. Not that it would do her any good in the cage, as he wasn’t wearing the key. “Your skull is perfectly intact. I wouldn’t want to lessen your value.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re a relict smuggler…” She surmised darkly.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“My name is Diederich. I’m a </span>
  <em>
    <span>poacher.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” He corrected her. “I sell relicts like you to people of wealth who actually want you around. In that sense I’m even better than most witchers. I keep you alive. Although I don’t--” he unfolded the letter, spotted a line, and recited, “‘still feel the shape of your hand in mine and the contour of your cheek on my lips.’ I’m afraid the pay is high, but not high enough for that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She tried to ignore the provocation. “Half of your product is rotting.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It sometimes happens,” He shrugged. “I can’t control what they do to themselves or the state of them before I capture them. Plenty of collectors are still interested in, lets say, a leshen’s skull, or a godling’s eyes in a jar.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But you’re worried about </span>
  <em>
    <span>my</span>
  </em>
  <span> condition?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Dopplers are far too rare, and far too valuable to let die on display. Generals may want a spy. Noble men may want a plaything-- to have a different body in their beds every night. Others may want a jester, entertainment for their children.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She spat at him, but it hit the ground limply. He feigned a slighted expression.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t change on command.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He carefully paced around where she had spat. “You know there’s a phrase from Zerrikania-- or at least I think there should be-- don’t know where I heard it. Maybe I made it up.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’s that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“‘With the help of a whip, even a monkey learns to dance on command.’”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara tried to hide the fear that had bound up tightly in her chest like a gnarled fist around her heart. “You aren’t worried that I’ve been in communication with a witcher?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why would I be? They’re never around when you need them the most, are they? Besides, you’ll go quickly. We’re in the middle of noble lands. Those who know me will come quick.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Northeast of Novigrad…” She mumbled to herself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nodded. “Clever creature.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She was, she reminded herself. She was. And there was a way out of the cage. There had to be. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The sound of a carriage and several armor-clad horses rolled over a hill behind her. It was still out of sight. Diederich had turned around to survey the current state of his collection. “Oh, shut up!” She heard him shout at the siren, and kicked at the cage.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>While his back was turned, she started to pull off her clothes. They were already stretched and slightly torn from her panicked transformations in Novigrad. They were once fine, but now they were muddy, and would look just like rags when mixed with the hay at the bottom of the cage. She slid the knife off first, and tucked it in her shoe with her stockings. With the shoes covered by her clothes and the hay, she took a deep breath in and tried to resist trembling from the cold. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pictured in her mind the shape of a nekker. It’s large head, jagged limbs, distended belly, and rows of crooked, sharp teeth. She looked down at herself to see some rather satisfying long claws. The only thing was to keep enough nekker out of her mind to preserve her rational thought. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Upon noticing the carriage come into view, Diederik took his keys from the small table under the tent and started out to meet the carriage on the dirt road. He caught a glimpse of his new nekker and jumped. “Little bitch….!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She could only shriek and grin in response. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Turn back. Do it now!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The nekker rocked its head from side to side. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I said </span>
  <em>
    <span>now!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> He hissed through his teeth as the carriage came to a stop. It was too late to scare her into submission; he had to put on airs. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As he welcomed the noble couple to his humble open air meat market with prostrating, humiliating gestures, she found it difficult to process human speech. Half was decipherable, and the rest all noise. The noblewoman gasped in amazement at the siren, and gestured to its iridescent scales. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We have a pond,” She entreated her husband. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The wings are clipped!” Diederich said. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They gabbed to each other for a few minutes and then the couple took another lap around the displays. The woman called the godling “unfortunate little dolly,” and the man asked about the doppler. Her capture was planned, she remembered. Plenty of time to get the word out to interested buyers. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But they would find no evidence of a doppler here. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If you will believe it, the doppler is there,” Diederich pointed to the nekker cage. The nobleman did not look pleased. He declared that he was not there for playing games. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But dopplers love to play games, you know,” Diederich assured nervously, attempting to laugh off the tension. He jogged to the tent and came back with a short spear. Luchezara suspected not all of the relicts died of natural causes. “What a perfect opportunity to demonstrate her in action. Before your eyes an ugly nekker will transform into a fresh young woman.” The wife narrowed her eyes at her husband. He cleared his throat nervously. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Now change back,” Diederich requested in a sugary tone. “Change back and you’ll come out of the cage and go and live somewhere nice.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Diederich, I’m not sure if I have the money on hand to waste on a cheat.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Aggravated, he held up a hand to silence him. “Just wait-- just wait, I say. You’ll see her.” He slammed the spear against the iron bars. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Change back!”</span>
  </em>
  <span> In between his shouts at her, he appealed to the noble couple. “Get closer, get closer, or you’ll miss it!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He prodded the nekker firmly in the thigh with the spear between the bars. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Transform, do it now!”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara shrieked and threw herself at the bars away from the spear and at the couple. The noblewoman squealed and backed far away from the gnashing teeth. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The nobleman shouted offense at Diederich and helped his nearly faint wife back into the carriage. Diederich rushed after them pleading. He swallowed the dust from their retreat and coughed his way back to the cages.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Think you’re smart, don’t you… You’ve just wasted one of your chances to get out of this cage alive, you bitch!” He screamed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She changed skins like a shift in the light and breathed in. She was herself again. “How many chances do I get?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Diederich sucked his teeth and glared at her, ripping his cap off and crushing it in his fist. He threw the spear angrily to the ground. She smiled for the first time in the cage. “Unlimited chances,” she guessed. “I’m too expensive to kill.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He scoffed sharply. “You’d rather die of starvation there in that cage?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her smile faltered. He was right. How many times could she save herself before her wasting life was no longer worth saving? To stay alive and yet stay in the cage was not enough. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pulled her cloak back over her naked body and they sat at an impasse, glaring at each other for what felt like hours while she formed a plan. The night was getting too cold. She had to escape, somehow. He lit a fire near his tent. It illuminated a small sliver of her knife between its hilt and where it was hidden in her shoe. He was too far away to strike. The only person she could wield the knife on was herself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And the only way to take away his power over her was to take away her value to him. She steeled herself, and gripped the knife. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Come see, Diederich,” She murmured in the dark. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“What foul creature are you playing at now?” He walked slowly over, spear in one hand. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not deceiving you now.” She told him. “No tricks. What I’m about to show you is all me, all real.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He saw the fire reflect off of the knife. “Where the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck </span>
  </em>
  <span>were you hiding that thing?” He growled. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara raised the knife to her lips. She smiled in the light of the fire, placed the tip of the knife in her mouth, and then dragged the knife across her cheek. Blood poured like water out of the gaping, growing wound. She gasped and sputtered in pain but didn’t stop. The subsequent scar would affect every transformation she tried to do thereafter. She was no longer perfect; no longer useful to anyone. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Diederich screamed and scrambled for the cage with his keys. “No--! </span>
  <em>
    <span>Stop</span>
  </em>
  <span>!” He wrenched open the door to the cage and dragged her out, but by then the wound had traveled all the way to her ear. She fell to the ground. She could taste the dirt and dust from the open hole in her cheek, and felt her heart beat in her teeth. She could see another godling, now-- living, this time-- occupying the cage below her.  Her hand held onto the knife like a vice. When he turned her over to survey the damage she had done to his investment, she stuck the knife hard into his eye and shattered his glasses. He cried out in pain. Blood mixed with blood when she pulled the knife out and the hot, ferric fluid spilled over her face. He flailed around wildly with the spear until it struck her square in the side and pinned her down by the neck with his other arm. She shrieked under him, but her swings with the knife couldn’t reach him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pulled the spear from her side and raised it again with intent. But it never came down. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Now.”</span>
  </em>
  <span> She heard the godling whisper. He had caught Diederich’s arm and was twisting it against the bars. He cried out and released his grip on her neck. She hammered at his sides with her knife. The blood flowed like a fountain until he fell on top of her, limp. The key had fallen to the dried grass next to their bodies.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>With her whole being numb from shock, She pushed his body away and grabbed the key. “Thank you,” She said, limping to unlock the godling’s cage. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He took a frantic look at the great expanse of freedom, so far from his home before turning back. “What about you?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Go,” She reassured him. “Head south.” An unbearable sting grew from her side. She raised a hand to it. Warm and wet. She remembered she had been stabbed. The godling ran, and she released the sylvan and siren next. The sylvan bolted without so much as a word. The siren screamed and immediately took flight. So the wings weren’t clipped. Diederich was probably too much of a coward to do so himself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara pulled her clothes on with pained, sobbing groans. Like the undead, she shuffled towards her confiscated belongings. A letter fell open to the ground to a crude map of Kaer Morhen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She could not return to Novigrad. More than needing an escape, she needed to establish a new life somewhere else, as someone else. But she didn’t want to. She had come too far to preserve Luchezara to just give up and become a farmer’s wife. Where else was there left to travel? To Kaer Morhen it would have to be. North. To Eskel. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After gathering her belongings, she tied a ripped piece of her cloak to her side and dragged herself onto Diederich’s frightened horse and rode Northwest, away from the rising sun. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She suspected it would take weeks to get to Kaer Morhen, and she needed help urgently. She rode until dawn, or at least it seemed so. She struggled to keep her eyes open, and was nearly slouching off of the saddle.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As luck would have it, there was a battlefield in the distance. From the flags planted in the trampled ground, it looked as though a diminished division of Redanians had been run over by Nilfgaard. She stopped the horse, and slipped off. A small group of Redanian soldiers were picking through the battle’s aftermath on the other side of the wide field; their silhouettes were illuminated in the morning fog. They were looking for survivors before rotfiends arrived, shouting into the burned expanse of land hoping someone would respond. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Experiencing a sudden jolt of energy at the prospect of saving her own life, Luchezara scrambled to a nearby area of brush and hid what was left of her belongings under a rock. She crouched and crawled onto the battlefield, hoping the soldiers wouldn’t see movement until the time was just right. Her fingers and knees slipped over the bodies of men with faces so disfigured, crushed, and sliced that it would have been impossible to replicate them. Then, she heard it. A sputtering cough, a shallow gasp for air. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A young soldier a couple of meters away was roused by the sound of his comrades' calls. A branch in the mud snapped under her knee. He turned his head to look. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Help… Help me…” He whispered. He started to get desperate, and louder. “Help me….!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She would have to be more desperate. She straddled his body and put a hand over his mouth to try to silence him long enough to get a long look into his eyes. “Be quiet…” She told him between frantic sobs. “You have to be quiet…!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He continued his strained shouting. Soon her hands were around his neck. “Look at me… please look at me...” She squeezed harder, and forced herself to watch the life leave his eyes until she was his grotesquely marred mirror image. She left his body; his wide blue eyes were staring plaintively, unblinkingly at the rising sun, and his mouth gaped open. She experienced a flood of his memories. A fragrant orchard. The plush skin of a peach. Touching his soft face, kissing him in the low light of boot camp. They felt so young then, and war had made them so old, now. What was his name? </span>
  <em>
    <span>Renalt. </span>
  </em>
  <span>The man he enlisted with, the man he loved. And then, an image of her own face, leaning, drooling, bleeding onto his. A muddy curtain of hair that blocked out the sun, blocked out any hope. Watching the features of her face twist and morph until he was looking at his own goulish, blinking death mask. She had never seen herself this way. Steam rose from his open mouth as his remaining body heat escaped. She smeared bloody mud and clay over it and called out his lover’s name to shake away the repeating memory from her mind that she now shared with his memories. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She, now he, stumbled to his feet. “Renalt….” He called weakly, slipping his way towards the soldiers. “I need help…. I need…. Renalt…!!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It’s Tomasz!” One of the men shouted. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Tomasz!” The others rushed to him, though his dead body was already too far away. Soon it would be destroyed by scavengers and rain. “He” fell into their arms with a relieved sob.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He’s alive!” Another said. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He’s wounded.” He caught a glimpse of the man in the glare of the rising sun. It was Renalt. “Badly… On the side, and the leg... “</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It looks like he took a shield to the mouth...”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Get him to the medical tent…!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Keep your eyes open, Tomasz…! Look at me, look at me,” Renault pleaded quietly and urgently in his ear as they carried him to a row of tents where the battle survivors were recuperating. “You’ll live, Tomasz…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Look at me… please, look at me…! </span>
  </em>
  <span>She’d succeeded in getting urgent medical care, at great cost. All Luchezara could see from her new, blue eyes was her own monstrous face as she finally succumbed to unconsciousness. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Look at me! </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That dawn, Eskel had finally reached Novigrad. The letters had stopped. Something was wrong. He had come to save her, or at worst, find out what happened to her. On his way past the city walls, his eyes caught a row of posters listing the bounty of escaped non-humans for any interested parties. One was of a half-elf woman with dull blonde hair, grey eyes, and a square jaw.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>WANTED. DOPPLER. REWARD. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Included was an artist’s rendition of her “true form,” a crawling, wretched, rat-like creature. In the sketch, she was scowling and blank-eyed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>DANGEROUS. </span>
  </em>
  
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He ripped the vellum notice from the wall.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Got your hopes high for the most expensive reward, don’t you, witcher?” A stranger chuckled next to him, one hand on his jagged sword and the other perusing other potential bounties. He pulled a halfling’s bounty from the wall and whistled as he walked off. “Wish you luck. Oh, what am I saying? You are the professional, after all. Leave some for the rest of us.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel stared at the paper. “Thanks,” In the sketch she was dead-eyed and scowling, with stringy, dull blonde hair. He compared it to the portrait she sent him. They were the same person, of course, but looked like strangers. It meant that the guards never had a chance to get a good look at her, hadn’t formally caught her. It meant that if she was hiding in Novigrad, he had only a short time to find her until she found a way to escape. </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Maiden and Monster</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Luchezara's body count triples. Eskel on her trail, wonders if he's hunting a monster or saving a damsel in distress. Must such things be mutually exclusive?</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>Eskel….. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He ran his fingers across a smooth, soft bare torso. Candle Light from the side of the bed gilded their bodies. She was straddling him; they were gyrating together. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Ah…..! Eskel…. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He softly cupped her breasts in his hands. She gripped his fingers and squeezed. He couldn’t see her face, only hear her voice. It was familiar. It was hers. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Luchezara…. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She gasped in ecstasy and arched her back. Blonde hair wisped over her shoulders. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Eskel….! </span>
  </em>
  <span>Her pace quickened, and he tried to match it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But he couldn’t. She thrust faster, moaned louder; she dug her nails into his chest. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Luchezara! </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Eskel…!!! Eskel…. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She leaned over him. Her hair blocked out the candlelight. He saw her face. It was the face of a succubus. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Look at me, Eskel…! </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He watched, terrified and vulnerable, as her neck began to twist, slowly. At every turn, every sickening crack of the neck, there was a new face— a rotfiend, a werewolf, a noonwraith— like a grotesque totem. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She hissed. He felt a forked tongue lick his cheek. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Open your eyes, Eskel…. open your eyes! </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He jolted awake in a cold sweat alone. Geralt has been right. He thought her a damsel, and if she were to get in trouble, it should have been in distress. The news that she had conned, or fought, or snuck her way out of the grip of the guard had been a jolt to his senses. She wasn’t really a half-elf. And now, she could be nearly anyone, and anywhere. Why hadn’t she just gone to Kaer Morhen? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel sat up and dragged her little portrait off of his nightstand. No matter what, that she’d sent it to him meant she wasn’t safe. He got out of bed and prepared to ask the temple guards about the situation. </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The guard yawned dismissively. It was early in the morning. “Dunno what you want us to say. One minute she was there in the alley, the next, she was gone. Goddamned dopplers. Probably turned to mud.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Heh. Maybe we trampled the cunt.” Another half-asleep soldier added. They were slumped against the city wall, shielding their eyes from the rising sun. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What alley?” Eskel asked in a low, measured tone. “I didn’t come to joke with you.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Around lowtown, next to the row of merchants. She was staying in an attic with an old biddy around there. Apparently held the woman hostage.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hn.” He doubted that. “I’ll pay her a visit, then.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Check all the dives around there, too, I reckon.” The first guard added. “They’re always sheltering some kind of degenerate.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Takes one to know one…” He muttered grudgingly and started on his way. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’dya say, freak?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel turned back to them. “I said, </span>
  <em>
    <span>thanks</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He cast a long shadow. The guards shrunk away from it against the wall. He went along his way. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The woman who harbored Luchezara for several weeks claimed to know little about what happened to her; she seemed to know even less about the time she was actually with them. She spoke with Eskel out in the street and wouldn’t let him in her home. That was normal for dealing with witchers, especially witchers who looked like he did. It was clear to him, though, that something else was at play. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She stayed here for a while, I opened my doors to her out of the kindness of my heart, thinking she was just any old poor thing. Can’t let a girl like that sleep out on the street, with what happens to stranded girls in this city. But she wasn’t a girl at all. She started making a nest in my attic, like a harpy… hissed at us… devoured our cat apart like a hawk ripping up a rabbit.” She shook her head and shivered. “We sure wish you were here before, witcher…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Clearly the experience was harrowing for her. She was lying through her teeth, but it sure seemed like she believed herself. He looked up and saw the outline of a curious cat in her window. “You wouldn’t mind if I went in and examined this ‘nest’? It would help me track her. She could come back here. You wouldn’t want that.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shook her head and avoided looking him in the eyes. “Well, uh, you see, we’ve already cleaned it up. We had to get on with our lives. Get a new lodger, pay our bills.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re not well off, then?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No, sir. We do what we can to get by. But monsters of all types take advantage of vulnerable people.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I understand,” he nodded. “May I ask you where you got your necklace?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She brought a ginger, surprised hand to the gem-studded gold chain around her neck. “What do you mean? It’s ah…. It’s an heirloom.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ah. I have one quite like it,” Eskel looped a finger through the gold ring on the chain. “It was given to me by someone dear.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh… mine as well. From my mother.” From where he was standing, it smelled like a doppler, having been on her bare skin far longer than it hung over the old woman’s rags. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He nodded, and straightened up. Pursuing the woman’s lies wouldn’t be worth it. If something truly horrid had happened, she wouldn’t have spun such a yarn about Luchezara’s behavior.  “Right. You said she went up the alley that way?” He pointed north. She nodded, and he left without dignifying her with a goodbye. She’d get it when he came back with the owner of the necklace to demand all her jewelry back. “Think I saw your cat’s ghost, by the way! Upstairs window!” He called out to her. He heard her door slam in response. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He made his way along the narrow street, looking for any sign of her and cursing under his breath. Maybe it was the sun or his mood, but his brow was even heavier that day. It cast a dark shadow over his yellow eyes. The shine off of them must have been quite sinister. He remembered that despite being in a half-elf’s body, her eyes-- at least to his heightened senses-- revealed her nature. They were glassy, crystal, gray and nearly opaque. Blank, reflective. Eskel felt that he saw himself reflected in them, in a good way, as if she was peering through to the very core of him. It was what dopplers did, of course, Geralt and Lambert reminded him after his date. But Eskel had never once seen himself in the way that she saw him. There was no pleading for another chance to prove he was kind and gentle. Most women looked at the witcher, straddling the line between man and monster, and erred on the side of monster. If Luchezara wanted to use what she searched in him with her eyes maliciously, she could have. But she didn’t. She held it within herself like something precious. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Do you know a song about a hen?</span>
  </em>
  <span> She wrote in one of her letters. </span>
  <em>
    <span>It’s been stuck in my head all day. </span>
  </em>
  <span>In a way, he was doing the same. He felt the contours of her miniature portrait in a pocket of his jacket. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oi, mister witcher!!” a dirty child ran underfoot. He jumped. “You lookin’ for a monster? One that went through here?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” He blinked. “Did you see anything?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a little girl. She shuffled her feet and shrugged. “I don’t know. For a few crowns I might have seen something.” Yet she still blocked his path. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He dug into his pockets and dropped a few bright coins into her dusty palms. Even if she had no information, he would have done the same. But he couldn’t resist making sure she knew that she should tell the truth. He crouched down to her height. “You know last week I exorcised a curse from a child that liked to lie too much.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What happened?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If ever he tried to eat, it would all turn to ash in his hands. Pulled a whole wraith right out of his mouth. They’re especially attracted to little ones who tell tales. So can you tell me the truth?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The girl gulped and tied the coins up nervously in her apron. “It’s the truth, I swear! I saw a girl-- in a blue cloak!-- running from the guard down this road. It was raining so I couldn’t see her very well, but it caused a real commotion. Then a girl pulled her into an alleyway. She disappeared, but the other girl came back out.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know the other girl?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was Neszka, from Crippled Kate’s.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing knowing women from Crippled Kate’s.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“When they have extra coin, they like to help us with food, give us blankets.” She rocked on her heels. He noticed a group of huddled children not far away from them. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is Neszka in trouble?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know yet.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Is the blue girl in trouble?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stood up and dusted off his knees. “Not if Neszka knows where she went.” He reached back into his pocket and dropped more coins into her hand. “Give these to your friends. Okay?” </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>The pain of each new loop of thread in the stitches pulled Luchezara in and out of consciousness. Two medics were pressed over her-- Tomasz’s-- body. They had cleaned and packed the stab wound in her side and were sewing shut the large traumatic slice in her cheek. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t understand what happened here…” One of the medics said.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean?” It was Renalt’s voice. It had a fearful edge. She wondered if his compatriots knew about the way he and Tomasz loved each other. She reminded herself that the </span>
  <em>
    <span>real</span>
  </em>
  <span> Tomasz was dead. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If a shield caused this gash in his cheek, then surely most of the teeth on this side would have been knocked out, as well. They’re all intact. Just some scratches to the gums. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Does it matter now?” Renalt cried out. “We’ve got less than twenty men left and you’re making an autopsy before one is dead?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>So, she thought, they didn’t know about the love between the two men. He was passing off his fear as platonic, but doing a bad job of it. She suffered silently through another rash of stitches; each cry of pain made the pain in her cheek even worse. They covered the stitches with honey and cotton dressing.  Immediately after they funneled a foul blend of herbs and alcohol into her mouth, and then left, leaving her in the room with Renalt. She thought vaguely if the choking taste of the tincture wasn’t a cosmic revenge for filling the mouth of the real Tomasz with mud and clay to disguise his recent death. She didn’t have much time to ruminate on it, as the mixture immediately sank her into slumber, the one thing she desperately didn’t want. An unconscious form was a form that was impossible to control, and subject to the irrational and constant shifts of the unconscious. </span>
</p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What’ll you have here, witcher?” The barmaid leaned suggestively over the bar and fondled the hair that hung over his eyes. Ordinarily he would have blushed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m looking for Neszka.” He said plainly. The brothel was loud and thick with smoke, yet the stick of beer and mead was audible under the feet of the patrons. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pretended to be put out. “Neszka only sees regulars. Somebody recommended her to you? There are at least three girls here that can do just what she can.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not here for… for that,” He assured her, as if he was valiant and not just taking up space and making other patrons uncomfortable while depriving the women of coin. “I need to ask her some questions. Witcher business.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Ah. You’re here looking for the changeling?” Her body language immediately shifted. She became a bit more closed off, a bit more proud. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know why I’m here?” He pulled out her portrait from his pocket along with the vellum bounty notice, and pushed them to her side of the bar. “You’ve seen her?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She picked up the portrait gingerly, as if she was greeting a lost friend. In a way, she was. “Our Lia… no creature deserves to parade around in her body. She was a gem, and she was left rotting in this city’s shit and piss.” She studied the portrait with empty eyes. “But this isn’t Lia. She could have never afforded this.” She tossed it back on the table and brought a heavy palm to rest on the bounty notice. “Can’t stand to look at it anymore. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Apparently Neszka knows what happened to her.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“We all do. We planned it. It’s only that Lia was Neszka’s best friend. She wanted to be there when it happened.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“When what happened?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If you came here for the bounty, witcher, I’m afraid you’re searching in vain,” She shook her head and set to pouring beer for a group of men who had drunkenly slammed into the bar and asked her attention. Luchezara’s fate wasn’t even worth pausing for. “We got more crowns than we ever could have from the guard for that cunt. Neszka trapped her in an alley when the guard came for her and passed her off to a relict poacher by the name of Diederik. I think he said he sets up shop in the northeast, near the noble estates. She’s long gone from here, now. And I hope she gets what she deserves.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She leaned over the bar to shout at an unruly drunk before turning back. “Since you won’t be finding any reward money here, I can get you a free beer. Just one though--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was gone. All he left was the bounty notice. She picked it up and chuckled. Raising it to the crowd, she shouted, “Who wants to play some darts in honor of our dear departed Lia?”</span>
</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <span>Eskel heard the raucous cheering as he was mounting his horse. His face burned with rage, but it wasn’t his place to justify or defend her actions. A thought, however, had been scratching at the back of his mind: would it matter to him if she had no justification, herself? He’d killed other monsters for less. </span>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara’s eyes fluttered open to the ceiling of the tent, the makeshift war hospital. She turned her head to the right; there were only a few unconscious bodies resting with her on the other side of the tent. It didn’t look like they would make it. She took a relieved breath, shuddering at the exhale from the pain in her side. But she was alive; she had been lucky, and she was glad. If she hadn’t found that battlefield, she would have bled out. If she had wandered the rural roads begging for help, scared peasants who would rather avoid conflict would have shuttered their doors to a bloodied half-elf suddenly appearing in their fields. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She could stay as Tomasz for as long as it took to heal. She would send a letter to Eskel as soon as she could. The more she imagined about Kaer Morhen and the farther she got from any familiar refuge, the more it transformed in her mind from a mysterious tower into a flowering, safe eden.   </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Luchezara turned her head to the left. “Renalt,” She murmured painfully, smiling Tomasz’s smile. It was forever marred, now. Only one side of her lips would raise. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He rolled his head in his hands, elbows on his knees. “No, no…” He muttered under his breath. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Have you been crying?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was silent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m so glad to see you…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He raised his head. His short cropped hair had been pulled this way and that from stress. He had an angular, yet full-featured dark face, with dark brown eyes and freckles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Who are you?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What do you mean…?” She struggled to sit up on her elbows. Some blood seeped from the wound dressing on her side. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re not my Tomasz.” He muttered darkly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She tried to laugh it off. It hurt. “I don’t know what you mean, sapling--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Dont.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>He pressed. “Don’t call me that. You aren’t him. When you were asleep, you… changed. Into someone else. Something else.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was time to give up the ghost. “You didn’t report it to your fellow soldiers…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I need some answers from you first.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I think that’s only fair.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Are you human?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How long have you taken the form of Tomasz?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She fully sat up, moved by his apparent reason and mercy. “It was just after the battle. I was badly wounded. I found him on the field. He was dying. I needed help, or I would die, too.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What wounded you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Someone vile.” </span>
</p><p>
  <span>“Did…” he took a slow breath. “Did you watch Tomasz die?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes,” she admitted softly. “I know how much he loved you. I have his memories. His body is on the far southwest side of the field.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stared at her for a moment, trying to reconcile the information with the Tomasz he was seeing in front of him. “...Did you kill Tomasz?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She swallowed hard, suddenly finding her words caught in her throat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>“Did you kill him?”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m sorry…” Luchezara whispered. “I’m sorry you have to mourn him alone…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He cried out and nearly jumped on her. She managed to leap up in time with a shout of excruciating pain. Her wounds wept blood. He was blinded by his own tears. “Let me leave,” she advised him slowly, quietly. She inched towards a  wooden tray of operating instruments. “Let me leave and you’ll never see me again. You can mourn, and--”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How dare you say that while you’re still wearing his face!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He lept on her again and had her pressed against a wood and glass paneled cabinet. He pressed her in the side. She whimpered. Glass behind her shoulder began to crack. She had no choice. She had to live. If she left him there, he would tell his men. She’d be running from another hunter, another captor. She needed to disappear. He needed to die. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She reached for a scalpel. It was the second time in as many days that she had purposefully reached for a knife. She closed her eyes tightly and thrust the scalpel deeply into his neck, once, and then twice. He didn’t even have time to scream; he was drowning in his own blood. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His body rested on the false Tomasz. One last embrace. Trembling, she let his body slump down to the ground. She stepped over it, and with great difficulty pushed his body under the cot on which she’d slept and covered the mess with a sheet. Into another sheet tied into a makeshift sack, she frantically stuffed as many dressings, oils, potions, and changes of clothes she could manage and strapped it over her chest. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As Tomasz, she stumbled out into the sunlight and headed for the nearest horse. She ignored the alarmed calls of the other soldiers that Tomasz shouldn’t have been sitting up, let alone dragging himself on top of a horse. She tried to make her way back to where she had stashed her belongings near the battlefield, but the soldiers blocked her way. They begged Tomasz to leave the horse and go lie down. They said he was acting out of his mind. It was delirium, one said. It was the medication. Her horse refused to move. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her head pounded from pain, but she had to escape. She had traced the map of Kaer Morhen so often with her fingers, walking them across the map. Luchezara knew which lands to pass in order to be on the right path.  She forced the horse to turn the other way, kicked its sides weakly, and took off north. If she stayed in the forests away from humans and rode all day, she would be able to reach Kaer Morhen in a week and a half. She hoped she would be able to survive until then. There would be no more deaths; the forest was much kinder than humanity. </span>
</p><hr/><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel arrived at the remote field to cut down the poacher, only to learn that vultures and scavengers had already torn him near to pieces. After chasing them away, he traced her steps. Her blood was all over him. The cage in which she was presumably held was splashed with it. Somehow she had left the cage. Somehow she had killed him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“She went north.”  A small, quiet voice from a bush told him. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His voice cracked from worry. “Show yourself.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>A godling crawled out of the bushes and blinked his wide eyes at Eskel, who blinked in turn. “I know, I know-- I’m far from where I should be. Spare me the lecture. This man,” he pointed to Diederich’s unrecognizable body, “paid some hunters to pull me out of my burrow. Brought me and my friend here. Brought her too. She killed him, and she freed us... Well, those of us that could be freed.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’re still here?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t want to leave my friend.” He admitted. He pointed upwards to a cage with a rotting godling. “It wouldn’t be right. You’re the first that stopped by that can help me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But your friend is dead.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I well know that, our kind isn’t stupid.” He bristled, and then softened. “I can’t leave them here. It’s too far away from home.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel grunted quietly in sympathy. He broke the lock and helped the godling retrieve the body of his friend. “I’m sorry,” He said. “I can’t help you take them back south.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Because you’re a witcher. Are you hunting her?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m trying to help her.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Then you’re a good one. She was hurt real bad.” He pantomimed marks on his own body. “One big cut, like a lopsided smile… and one jab to the side. I wish you luck.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You, too. North, you said?”</span>
</p><p>
  <span>The godling nodded. Eskel took off again.  </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t long before he reached the battlefield. The unmistakable scent of non-human blood sang out among the ferrous stench of rotting humans. Another dead body that bore every mark of her involvement. He brushed back the mud on the victim’s face. He was young. He didn’t die from wounds; there were deep bruises on his neck. Her blood marked his face like paint. Eskel followed the tracks from the body. It seemed this dead soldier got up and walked. Before he could ask the soldiers if they had witnessed anything strange, he heard commotion from the tents. Someone named Renalt had his throat slashed. Tomasz was gone, and to the north. Eskel was willing to bet that Tomasz was laying right beside him. Luchezara’s body count was now three. He tried to shake the image of the beast he dreamed about from his mind. She would explain it all when he found her. If he found her… </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He stood up and followed her tracks back to where she had presumably first stopped at the field, and found where she had stashed her belongings. It contained what was left of her jewelry, some bills, and all of his letters. He laughed softly. She didn’t pack any food, no survival supplies. She was more human than she realized. He thumbed through the letters until one of his letters with his maps fell out. The ink on the map had been smudged from the oils on her hands, and the parchment had worn. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sighed with relief. All of the tension in his chest released, and butterflies fluttered in instead. She was going to Kaer Morhen. She had saved all his letters. And she was on her way to Kaer Morhen. Luchezara: willful, beautiful, clever, stubborn, dangerous… in danger. He gathered up her precious objects and set out for Kaer Morhen. He didn’t know it, but he was only a day behind her. He knew the way like the back of his hand, and there was nothing more north but forest.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Goldilocks and the Three Witchers</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Eskel had seen that a monster may be a monster, no matter how charming she is. Luchezara reaches Kaer Morhen, where childhood scars and adult conquest exist within the same walls. She realizes the same is true for witchers; a witcher is a witcher, no matter how kind he seems. Eskel is on his way, but he isn't the first to arrive at Kaer Morhen for the winter.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>When Eskel reached the battlefield he was only one day behind her; he knew the way to Kaer Morhen like the back of his hand. But for all his experience as a tracker, he wasn’t a match for Luchezara, for whom disappearing into a crowd was a raison d’etre.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> At the nearest town, just another day south of Kaer Morhen she abandoned the Redanian horse and painfully shed Tomasz’ skin for her usual form. The shifting of her skin popped several of the hastily placed stitches in her cheek and strained the wound in her side. Behind a barn, she changed into a plain, relatively clean ensemble of gray army issue breeches and shirt. She tied her hair up with some wound dressing fabric, and hitched several free rides on the backs of carriages. Without her jewelry and without her clothes, her plain but pleasing features were completely forgettable; she looked like any other farmer’s boy. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Well, not many farmer’s boys had a new smile carved into their cheeks. “Accident with a hoe,” she practiced saying, hand to her cheek where the dressing had become soaked with blood. There was no time to stop and patch it. Help would be at Kaer Morhen; it had to be. “Accident with a hoe.” She didn’t think she rightfully knew exactly what a hoe was, but she’d heard it before. For all her time spent in the memories of others, none had been a farmer. Before she took on the form of Tomasz, she didn’t know what soldiers did when there wasn’t a war on. They were just regular people, with families, and lives beyond the battle. She swallowed the guilt that continued to rise like bile in her throat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara continued to carriage-hop all through the night and into the next morning. She passed fitfully in and out of a feverish sleep, roughed awake by itching hay, or fellow animal passengers. Several hours after she’d noticed the last town marked on Eskel’s map fade into the distance, she was jolted awake by rough hands on her shoulders. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“End of the line,” the grain merchant, her inadvertent chauffeur, muttered. He tossed her into the dirt road and went on his way. He muttered something about how the war was making for too many urchins and beggars. “Go back where you came from, fool! Nothing left north of here but wolves, and you’re already half butchered!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She called out with strained breath that it had been an accident with a hoe, but he had turned on a westbound road towards the coast. Nothing but wolves. And she couldn’t see anything beyond the trees. It was still morning; she had to find out where this fortress was before nightfall.  She tied her makeshift pack of medical supplies tighter over her chest and started the walk towards higher ground. Ordinarily she would have simply just joined the wolves and stayed for one smelly, but comfortable night, but she couldn’t risk her wounds. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was quite ironic, she told herself while scaling rocks, that for all she had done to come out of the woods and into the world she was seeking refuge there again. Hunted out of the woods, hunted from the city all the way back. Of course, she didn’t know if anyone for sure was hunting her. Maybe the temple guard wouldn’t care once she was outside the city. But maybe a bounty hunter would. Or those soldiers. Or another Witcher. Luchezara knew what Novigrad had been doing to Dopplers. They were baked to death in clay coffins. It had become a weekly public spectacle in the weeks before she fled. There could not have been that many dopplers in the city; they were an endangered species as it was. She suspected most were unfortunate human victims of religious zealots or personal vendettas. All of their denial made them more suspect, and as accusations ramped up, the witch hunters stopped administering a silver test. Humans just wanted to see blood.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She groaned in pain and growing anger as she crawled up a steep cliff. It was the first time she had been truly alone with her thoughts since Novigrad, and the first time she was able to process everything that had happened to her. It was filling her with rage. She didn’t kill Lia, a human did. After all his proclamations of devotion to her, after all the nights he spent with her, all the money he spent to woo her, when Beracek learned that Luchezara wasn’t a human, his first instinct had been to kill her. Tomasz’s lover Renalt wanted to kill her, too— and for what? She hadn’t done anything but stumble serendipitously upon an unfinished murder of the young man by a Nilfgaardian’s sword. All humans knew was to kill. To think she’d waxed poetic to Eskel about all she loved about humanity months before. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She came to the top of the hill and collapsed to her knees. The emotional weight of the previous days buckled her knees, and a fever from brewing infections in her wounds oppressed her like fog. The air felt thin. Luchezara raised her eyes to the sky, and— </span>
  <em>
    <span>there. </span>
  </em>
  <span>At first she perceived it as a stray cloud, snagged on a particularly tall bough. It was a side of a white stone wall. Her legs lifted her up and she drifted towards it, seeing more and more of it beyond the trees the higher she walked until she had crossed its bridge and stood at its doors. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Its shape mapped to the contours of Eskel’s sketches that she had filed away in her mind, but it felt somehow more still than it did on paper. She pounded on the large wooden doors. “Hello…??” There was no answer, and the doors were likely too thick to hear one small being on the other side, anyway. The walls were too high to scale. There had to be another way inside. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara walked along the perimeter, still hearing nothing. Everything rested on coming to Kaer Morhen for help and refuge. She nearly tripped over a fallen brick. It led her to piles of bricks, some old and crumbling, some new and stacked with intent to rebuild next to a wide hole in the wall. She could see the emptiness of the inner courtyard. “Hello! Eskel…?” She called again. Her echo answered back. She stepped across the rocks and climbed down into the courtyard, where she heard the noise of something rustling in the unkempt grass. What was it? And why was it the only living thing there? Barely daring to breathe, she inched across the grass before being startled by a loud bleat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Goat,” she exclaimed loudly to herself, a habit she’d picked up while spending those months alone in Novigrad. Several goats. It looked like they were using the courtyard for shelter from whatever ate goats, but they didn’t look like the shaggy kind of wild goats that she’d seen before. She crouched to the ground to slow her racing heartbeat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What happened here, goats?” She sighed. They gathered around her with mild interest. A young one rubbed his new horns on the sling over her back. She rubbed the wound dressing over her cheek. “Oh, how I wish I could talk to you.” Changing her form now would be disastrous, especially to something so different. “But you don’t have much to say, huh…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She received several bleats in response, infectious like yawns. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Wish I could eat grass like you…” Her stomach let out a hollow roar. “I’m hungry… I don’t know how to cook.” </span>
  <em>
    <span>Could</span>
  </em>
  <span> half-elves eat grass? When she had been in other animal forms, grass tasted great. Would it still? In front of the gods and the sagely horizontal gazes of the goats, she reached down and pulled some grass from the dirt and chewed it gently. No-- half-elves could not eat grass. She spit out most, but forced herself to swallow what she’d already chewed. After all, she wasn’t at all sure she would find any food inside. Humanoids had such limited palates. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Okay… see you later, goats.” She brushed grass from her knees and headed up the sloped walk to the inner wooden doors. “I hope…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>These doors were much lighter than the outer doors, but she still had to wrench them open, fighting a pained scream as the door caught her side when she pushed her body through the small open sliver she’d made for herself. Why was it unlocked? She looked out into the darkened hall. A lone bird flapped around the rafters. Why was it so empty?</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hello...?” Luchezara called again in vain. She took a torch and a fire striker set from where they hung by the door, and began to explore as she tried to create sparks over the torch. When she was finally able to illuminate the room, the state of it shocked her. There was nothing but a long table, a few sparse bookshelves, and boxes. No sign that anyone had to leave in a hurry, or that anything horrid had happened. It was just decrepit. She waved the torch over the lewdly painted walls. It had been lived in at some point. The light passed briefly across some letters scratched into the wall at her eye level. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>Eskel 11, </span>
  </em>
  <span>it read, with a sharp line carved under it. To the left of it, was a line placed lower, with </span>
  <em>
    <span>Geralt 11</span>
  </em>
  <span> scrawled over it. She followed the names and lines as they repeated all the way up and down the wall. Farther to the right, always lagging behind the other two up the wall she found the name </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lambert 7</span>
  </em>
  <span> and all the way up, meticulously marked each time until it reached </span>
  <em>
    <span>Lambert 1272 </span>
  </em>
  <span>and farther to the right, </span>
  <em>
    <span>Ciri 10, Ciri 13, Ciri 21 </span>
  </em>
  <span>. At some point they stopped aging, and Lambert kept counting. She remembered that he was the loud one; it made sense to her.  The lower she looked, the more varied the spelling of the names got-- young boys learning how to spell. She couldn’t help but smile. They were height markings. This was where Eskel had grown up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>If this was a home, there had to be something here. Some kind of food, some kind of medicine. Luchezara left the great hall, lighting torches along the way, into the hallways. She was about to pass by a darkened, windowless room until torchlight glinted off of rows of glass inside. She stepped in and lit the torch inside before resting the one she had been carrying in another empty holster on another wall. There were potions on one side of the room. There were jars of pickles and preserves on the other. In the middle, strange metal contraptions littered the room, dusty and long gone unused. </span>
  <em>
    <span>What was this place?</span>
  </em>
  <span> Knowing nothing about potions, she picked the ones which looked the tastiest. It seemed like a good idea, after all, caustic poisons were unlikely to look like honey or apple juice. She uncorHer ked an “apple juice” and threw it back. Something in the room might control her infections. Her throat immediately collapsed on itself. Her stomach wouldn’t tolerate it. She wretched it back onto the floor, a mix of blood and amber liquid that had mixed in the cauldron of her stomach. Not juice. Trembling, teeth chattering, she begged the next jar to work. It was thick, bright, nearly opaque and almost iridescent. It tasted like honey and had the bite of crisp fresh water. After the first mouthful she did feel slightly more calm. It remained to be seen how it might actually help. She was less choosy with the pickles and preserves. She swept two arms around a random shelf and carried what she could back to the table in the main hall. She came back to the room to take some piles of medical supplies that were in a box next to the potions and found a mirror in what seemed to be the toilets to finally see the state of herself. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her eyes were sallow and dull. Her skin was somehow pallid and flushed. Cold, sticky sweat covered her face and neck. She removed her shirt and peeled back the wound dressing on her side. She washed it in grain alcohol that she took from the medical supplies-- for wounds or other things, she didn’t know-- and felt free to cry out, now that she knew she was finally alone there. It was bloody, but stable. However, all of the pained screaming she had been doing the past few days had stretched the stitches of her cheek wound beyond repair. The black thread stitches had loosened grotesquely. They were hardened with blood and bent like the legs of a spider over the wound. The wound itself was inflamed and crusted over; she could taste the infection from the inside of her mouth, sour and rotten. She poured the alcohol over it and gargled it in her mouth. She may have swallowed several shots, as well. Her reflection looked back at her from a dull hammered metal mirror. The person she faced seemed to no longer be Lia; she didn’t look quite human.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She brought the bottle with her to explore the rest of the rooms. One full of dull swords, combat dummies, and explosives-- always useful. Another room was filled with dry wooden basins and smelled strongly of lye. The room led out to a balcony with drying lines, and steps down to a stream. Laundry, she surmised, as she tore through the clean, if dusty pile of linens. She threw the sack over her back down onto the floor and threw what was left of her mud-covered fine clothes into a basin. She would have to deal with it later, but not so late. There didn’t seem to be any clothes that would fit her. She shed her Redanian army standard issue shirt and pulled on one from the pile, which dwarfed her. “Better than nothing.” She shrugged, and took another swig from the bottle on her way out.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara returned to the great hall and twisted off the caps of several jars of food. She took several fingerfuls of preserves of wild strawberry, blackberry, and apple butter. She suffered consuming two pickled cucumbers and a handful of pickled tomatoes before her cheek wound protested the acids.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> Her feet dragged her into another room before she even realized what it was. It was large, with high ceilings. It smelled like old leather and must. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And she was face to face with a fiend. She stumbled back. Its mouth was wide open and snarling; its eyes were dull. A trophy. Her eyes took in the whole room. The fiend head was mounted on the right wall, next to the head of a chort, a shaelmaar, several nekker chieftains, leshen antlers, mounted wyvern and basilisk wings,  the dried heads of alps and bruxi with their skin pulled taut over their cheekbones, mouths open like expectant lovers.  Her stomach churned from more than the alcohol. She peered into the glass eyes, and in some cases the dark absence of eyes of werewolf and striga heads, so many intelligent species or merely poor cursed humans in over their heads. Creatures who raised young, felt love and hatred, who communicated with one another in beautiful tones. Or, even in the common tongue.  Another dead godling, staring into nothing, its eye sockets closed with burlap fabric. The wrinkled head of a doppler, a face she barely recognized. The bottle slipped from her hand and shattered on the floor. She felt the tears fall on her cheeks, but she hadn’t felt them in her eyes. Everything that she’d consumed revolted in her gut. She vomited onto the stone floor. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was an indescribable feeling, to have sacrificed so much to save one’s life and then coming face to face with one’s death. To have been led to a safe haven by a man she had begun to trust, only to learn it was a graveyard. She felt hollow. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara drifted out of the room and closed the door quietly, as if she was afraid to disturb the peace of its inhabitants. She wasn’t alone there like she’d previously thought. The thought was comforting and disturbing. Her thoughts were tied in knots. Relief twisted itself around fear. Resentment, and disgust were braided over love. Before deciding to sleep, she pulled a dull practice sword from the first room she entered and dragged it with her into the first bedroom she found. She slipped into one of the beds. At least with the chill growing outside, the beds were warm. Clutching the dull sword close to her, she turned and faced the wall. There were more etchings there. There were little tick marks all along the wall and through to the next, all the way to the barred window. Counting the days? The fortress did feel more like a prison than a home. Slumber overtook her before she could speculate more. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It was a sound sleep, despite it all. It was necessary sleep; lifesaving sleep. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>What the f-- HELLO??”</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And it had been cut short. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>EXCUSE ME. HELLO??” </span>
  </em>
  <span>The voice was loud, almost shrill. It felt like it was piercing right through her eyes to her brain. Luchezara’s eyelids peeled open slowly and separately. She shivered in the morning cold. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hnn…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“</span>
  <em>
    <span>Motherfucker…GET UP.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>She heard the sound of a weapon unsheathing. Her eyes were open. Her body twisted toward the sound. She groggily yet frantically gripped the sword on the dull blade and menacingly held it up in the distance between them. He easily knocked it aside with his own. A silver sword. She felt its heat. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“This isn’t an inn.” He spat. He was stout, with dark hair. A long scar ran over his right eye, parallel with his aquiline nose.  “You need to tell me who the </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuck </span>
  </em>
  <span>you are, and why you’re in my bed. And then you need to leave.” He was covered in leather. But the last time she’d seen him, he had been in a towel.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Lambert?” </span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Eels and Emotions, Both are Slippery</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Luchezara learns from Lambert how monster killers are made out of unwanted young boys. Eskel confronts the principles of his own transformation that lie between him and Luchezara, in the shape of two dead soldiers. Final chapter before epilogue.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Lambert had returned to Kaer Morhen as he always did early in the winter. After Vesemir died, he vowed he would never come back; as it turned out, that didn’t happen. At Kaer Morhen supplies were free and his bed was always open, even though bad memories infested the room like bedbugs. It would only be for one night, tops, like it always was. Long enough to recuperate, not so long that his fellow Witchers would arrive to the sarcophagus of their collective disgraceful childhood and interrogate him about coming back, or tease him over it, or fish around his feelings. Geralt usually left them well enough alone. Eskel in particular asked people how they were feeling like he was trying to extract a confession out of a convict. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>This time was not quite like always. On his way through the bombed out walls he heard Eskel’s goats bleat up a storm. Lousy bastards. Not good for anything but waking him up at the asscrack of dawn. Footprints near them in the trampled grass confirmed it. Someone was here, or had been. But not Eskel or Geralt; the prints were too small. He drew his sword and stepped carefully towards the doors to the main hall. Townsfolk were too far away and too distrusting of Witchers to ever come to Kaer Morhen without trying to sell supplies, or in the worst cases try to pass off children they couldn’t afford to bring up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The lit torches in the hall surprised him. Whoever was present hadn’t come to steal, they had come to stay; and, he noticed with annoyance at the mess on the table, to raid their winter food supply. Seemed as though the greedy fucker didn’t even like the pickles.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He found mud caked women’s clothes in the laundry. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Not </span>
  </em>
  <span>a fucker,” he muttered under his breath. “A </span>
  <em>
    <span>fuckess.” </span>
  </em>
  <span>He laughed at himself, feeling less threatened. For once he wished his brothers were here. They would have laughed. He found the regurgitated remains of the pickles, preserves, alcohol, white honey, and traces of blood in the trophy room. The blood seemed human, but just barely; although having never had that sense before, he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. He’d leave that for someone else to clean up. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Two of the bedrooms were clean and empty. Vesemir had always insisted on a precise kind of cleanliness, said it separated men from beasts, and that such a distinction was one that Witchers had to cultivate due to their special genetic circumstances. But a clean bed wouldn’t stop a villager from spitting on a witcher, no amount of respectability would.  Even in adulthood, after his death they all went through the motions like they expected a strike to the head if they didn’t— which was why he was caught so off-guard when his own bedsheets had been rustled and pulled this way and that. Whoever had done so was still under them, and snoring. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What the f-- HELLO??”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The figure under the sheets didn’t stir save for the rise and fall of their deep, still breathing. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“ EXCUSE ME. </span>
  <em>
    <span>HELLO</span>
  </em>
  <span>??” He watched a fist slowly curl and unfurl in response, and heard a small moan. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Hnn…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span> They— she— raised her head. He noticed she had been bleeding all over his pillow. She tried to point one of the practice swords at him. He knocked it away. She looked scared; he almost felt bad. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“ Motherfucker…</span>
  <em>
    <span>GET UP</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” He pulled his sword again, out of annoyance this time rather than caution. “This isn’t an inn. You need to tell me who the fuck you are, and why you’re in my bed. And then you need to leave.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Lambert?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He blinked wide, but narrowed his eyes. “How do you know my name?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shuffled out of the bed, in no hurry despite the sword pulled on her, like she really did know him. She didn’t seem very familiar. Her blonde hair was as vibrant as old dishwater and tied up like a bird’s nest. Her face was forgettable anyway, save for the massive inflamed wound on her cheek. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shrugged, and stood up with a deliberately small yawn and a wince. “I have a particular memory for faces. You’re Eskel’s friend.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Huh.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“The mean one.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sucked his teeth. Nothing she had said was inaccurate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara noticed he wasn’t recalling. “It’s </span>
  <em>
    <span>me,” </span>
  </em>
  <span>She asserted, as if humans had the same encyclopedic memory as a Doppler. “Luchezara. I served you drinks at Dijkstra’s bathhouse.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He groaned. “Listen, I’m holding a sword at you, so I’d like you to get to the point of why you’re here with a little more recognition of that fact, a little more urgency. Please.” He waved the sword around to illustrate. “Or should I let you wash up and make you breakfast and do your hair and then maybe when you’re finally ready to start the day you’ll tell me?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She blinked. “Would you?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“No! </span>
  <em>
    <span>Fuck, NO!” </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara had been under the impression that they were friends. Or, she had known so much about him from Eskel’s letters, and from what she was seeing now behind his eyes, that it seemed like they knew each other very well. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“It was about a year ago.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Try harder. I barely remember what happened a week ago.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>That didn’t seem healthy. She tossed the thought aside and cleared her throat. “In Novigrad. All three of you were there. That was a couple of months before the witch hunters started coming after non-humans. Eskel told me to come here. I…. I thought he would be here. He begged me to come.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Non-humans?” </span>
  <em>
    <span>The kind of shit Eskel was willing to get himself into just to touch something resembling human tits...</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You don’t remember? I’m a Doppler.” She watched the color drain from his face as he realized he’d been making unbroken eye contact with a changeling for several minutes. “No, ah— please, look— ah, no, I mean… I need help.” She gestured to her face, and her side. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He kept his distance, and gestured back at her with the tip of the blade. “What happened there?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Caught by a poacher.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He do that to your face?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“To my side.” She grimaced. “Carved up my face myself. It was the only way he wouldn’t sell me.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He took in a frustrated, sharp breath through his nose. “Is he following you?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He’s dead.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert didn’t want to know. “Anyone else?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She stared at him matter-of-factly. “No one could have followed me.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn’t nod in acknowledgement, but he sheathed his sword. Luchezara wasn’t any real danger to him, anyway. Dopplers were peaceful, mostly, though she may have been an outlier. It wasn’t like she could do anything to hurt him with those horrendous gash across her face. One transformation into a dangerous creature with a different skull shape and her face might split in two. She had effectively made a bear trap for herself. “You’re the one that killed that old merchant. I remember. How do I know you’re telling the truth about Eskel?” </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“We’ve been writing letters to each other for the better part of a year.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you have them?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She frowned, eyes forlorn. And for a moment she finally broke eye contact. “No. I lost them on the way. And he wouldn’t want me showing them to you, anyway. They’re…. intimate.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“That sounds like a lie. I know Eskel. I’ll be gone before tonight but I’m not gonna leave you here to mess with all our— </span>
  <em>
    <span>their</span>
  </em>
  <span> shit. So if I think you’re lying, I’ll escort you out, or you won’t leave here alive at all.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I thought Witchers were supposed to be merciful to monsters that are harmless?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’m not convinced that you have been harmless while you were on your way here. Besides, you know that’s not true. You threw up in the trophy room. I know you had a run-in with Geralt— me and Eskel aren’t as lazy as him when it comes to taking care of </span>
  <em>
    <span>problems.</span>
  </em>
  <span>” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She swallowed hard. Of course, she was telling the truth, but she had no proof. And she wasn’t telling the truth about being harmless. She decided to bluff. “Let’s say I’m telling you the truth, and you decide I’m not. You do something horrid to me, and Eskel finds out. Do you want to take the chance?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert shuffled from foot to foot nervously, weighing the options. He tried to suss out if she was bluffing, and she got a long look behind his eyes. His memories played in her mind like shadow puppetry, deeply buried so that most of their texture was missing, save for the pain. Pain, and bruising, anticipation and fear. Two young Witchers. He’d been afraid of Eskel; maybe he still was. She let out a breath; she knew she’d be safe. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fine.” He rubbed the stubble over his chin roughly. “Come with me.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If I don’t fix those stitches, you’ll get gangrene. Looks like you’ve cut straight through the muscle.” He paces out of the room, and she stumbled after him.  “If I didn’t help you and you died here that would be just as bad to him as if I’d taken you down myself.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He sat her down on a bench in the great hall. “So, when he gets here, you’re gonna tell him I helped you.” He sighed in annoyance. So much for not letting anyone know he’d ever come back to Kaer Morhen. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara was silent for a moment while he rooted around in some box of supplies. If Eskel wasn’t already there, then he probably would not be coming. “I haven’t written to him in weeks. Not since I was hiding out in Novigrad. I’m fairly sure he’d have gotten tired of all the chaos I was living in.” Some of the letters did sound especially exasperated when he begged her to rethink her last stand in the city. She was stubborn, and no longer wanted to live based on the grace of humans who would sooner boil her alive than embrace her as one of their own. And in the end she had only ended up exactly where he told her to run to, especially worse for wear. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert heard some of the pretend confidence in her voice falter. He didn’t know how to deal with emotions in normal circumstances, let alone however all of this would unfold. “Look,” he told her exasperatedly, brandishing a pair of medical scissors. “If you don’t shut up just for one minute I’m never going to be able to fix this. Cry later when I’m gone.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pressed her lips together and winced as he set about delicately cutting and pulling away the black thread stitches.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And I wouldn’t be so dramatic.” He added. “He’s probably turning over every stone and turning out every witch hunter’s coat in Novigrad right now. That’s how he is.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He’s kind.” She mumbled through pursed lips. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert threaded a crescent-shaped needle with new thread, and scoffed. “No. He tends to fall in love with anything vaguely shaped like a person with tits that gives him the time of day.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you not like him?” She asked. “He wasn’t always good to you.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He froze for a moment. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Of course. Doppler shit. </span>
  </em>
  <span>“Since you insisted on rooting around in my brain, I’m gonna make this hurt as much as it can.” He doused the needle and her cheek in some strong alcohol before he dug it in. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She supposed she deserved that, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of showing that the needle swimming in and out of her cheek was painful— she could barely feel that cheek anyway. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He seemed to be weighing the consequences of giving her even more information, but spoke anyway. “We didn’t get along at first. Young boys of different ages hardly ever do. Geralt and Eskel came here with nothing. Eskel was probably one child too many from some family of hill people. They gave up the youngest one, I’m sure without regrets. Sending a kid to a witcher school is easier than an abortion. Also comes with a greater chance the kid’ll die. I came here because my father had lost a bet. I had a family. I had a mother that, well...ostensibly, she loved me… she was just shackled for life to a violent, drunken bastard. Nobody loved Eskel. I guess he resented me for what I lost, and tried to beat the love out of me, too— wanted to make sure I knew how it felt to be alone, to feel that helpless. The joke was on him, though. I already knew how to take a beating.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She said nothing; partly because there was a metal hook holding one side of her face together, and partly because she was aligning what she was hearing with what she had seen when she really looked at Eskel. Behind his eyes there was a deep, silent, yawning emptiness, the kind you could fall down forever, and not even hear your own echo. Such impressions were usually difficult to interpret, before fully assuming someone’s form. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He feels bad about it now, still, but I can’t blame him for anything. This place makes kids into killing machines, anyway. They say mutations strip Witchers of emotion, but they don’t, really. They may deaden them, but believe me,” he pulled the stitches slightly taught and clipped the thread. “It’s the training that does that. The beatings. Being strapped down and tortured until the fundamental composition of your body changes forever. Being told at the tender age of ten that the only way you’ll eke out a living or respect in this world is through killing and presenting the severed head of some pathetic creature for some coin sure does suck all your empathy right out through your nose.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He said it all so casually, then told her to let the wound air out, and to plaster it only at night with white honey. He checked the wound on her side and said that with time it would scar, but it would be otherwise fine; it was shallow. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her wounds were surprisingly the last thing on her mind. “I don’t understand… Eskel is a good person. He isn’t like you. But you went through all of the same things.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He scowled at her after he slapped a jar of white honey into her palm and tossed the rest of the supplies into a crate behind him. “First of all, it’s not because he’s a better person than me, it’s because I’m smarter than him. I see through all the bullshit, you get me? Vesemir, our trainer— rest in fucking pieces— tried to put it in our heads that being a witcher was some noble profession, like a knight errant from a storybook. Being a witcher and helping people was supposedly the ticket to love and admiration for us wretched little children.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. She was beginning to think he didn’t mind talking to her, so long as he could unload all his grievances. She was an exceedingly good listener, evolutionarily. “Right. I can see you don’t buy it either. But your man Eskel bought it hook line and sinker. Because he felt he needed that love and admiration. The problem is, we’re not heroes. We’re glorified exterminators; and no one wants to invite the exterminator for dinner because he always smells a bit too much like the rats he gets paid to get rid of. But he’s got his own moral code— me, I don’t have any, and Geralt makes his up as he goes along, but Eskel always has to do the ‘right thing.’ Nearly got his face clawed off once for the ‘right thing.’” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You never needed the admiration? Not from anyone? I’m surprised you’re the one to be ridiculing a man who wants to be loved above all else, to not be lonely.” She cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes curiously, as if sharpening the memory in her mind’s eye. “You’re very lonely without Aiden. That’s why you’re unkind.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Lambert sat and said nothing for a moment. It was almost like the sound of the name had arrested his body. He hadn’t heard it in a long while. He himself hadn’t had the strength to say it out loud since the murder. He held up a hand. “This isn’t about me. And that’s not information you deserve.” His voice was bitter and stinging. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t take anything from memories, I just share them with you.” The memories were brilliant with joy and sharp from sadness, not muddled or blurred at all. He held onto them so ardently that they hardened like diamonds, preserved forever, for better and for worse. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“If I don’t share them with my brothers, I certainly wouldn’t willingly share them with you.” He stood up and laughed bitterly. “Fucking hell, do I regret helping you! Doesn’t matter if they speak common, monsters don’t have any respect.” He dragged the pickles from the table. “Do what you want. Stay here all alone and read a goat’s memories if you get bored. And then when you’re all healed, go fuck yourself.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You’ll just leave me here?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Why ask? You’d rather I kill you? In a month or so Geralt or Eskel may show up, they may not. Either way, you aren’t my problem, as much as you’re trying to make that so.” He scowled at her once more before turning his back and heading toward whatever business he planned on before he left that night. “Hope you know how to hunt. You may be here alone for a while.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>As she watched him walk away she decided that she would always harbor a certain distaste for him. She couldn’t just sit on her hands and wait for anyone. Luchezara stood and marched towards the laundry. The first thing she could do was have clean, warm clothes— what she had found to wear was only the former. When she brought a wooden basin to the stream with her muddy clothes and a chunk of lye soap, she noticed something wriggling in the water. She could have smiled, if it hurt any less to smile. Eels. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She didn’t know how to cook, or hunt without claws or carnivorous teeth. Before the survivors arrived to Novigrad, before they’d even crossed the Pontar delta, the diet of most dopplers living in low level forests was berries, fish, and freshwater eel. Their bones were thin and fragile, and the flesh was yielding and sustaining. She filled the basin with several writhing eels before soaking her muddy cloak in the stream and scrubbing it against a rock to loosen the soil.   </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On her way back inside with her wet clothes and wet eels, she saw Lambert sharpening a sword over a whetstone through the gap in the fortress wall. Without a word but with unrelenting eye contact, she grabbed an eel and bit right into its side. If he wanted to see a true monster in front of him, he would, and there was nothing he would do about it. She stood there and chewed at him menacingly before returning back up the stairs to the laundry where she strung her cloak over a rope suspended along the parapet to dry. Although she refused to show it, she regretted the bite. Maybe it was better to only take in liquids until she could feel the left side of her face. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She took a deep breath when she came back indoors and looked around at her empty surroundings. She felt like she was in limbo, with her life again dependent on someone else. She detested it. It wasn’t her, she assured herself. This was just how humans were. She would figure out how to eke out her own existence without hiding, somehow. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>There was still daylight, but she could think of nothing else than sleep; to sleep, and learn this all was a nightmare; to sleep and start over. A new body, a new life. She lightly traced her stitches with her fingers as she dressed them again with honey and linen gauze. It would never be quite a new life with a distinctive mark like that. And it would be one without him. She’d lost the letters; that was hard enough. As she got back into Lambert’s bed, now hers, marked in her blood, she chided herself for needing Eskel. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him to be there, to see her like she was. But she needed him, and it made her feel powerless. It should have been easy to put on a new face and forget whatever came before; it’s what she would have done, </span>
  <em>
    <span>had</span>
  </em>
  <span> always done. It would be easy— once she was reasonably healed— for Luchezara to disappear. She’d take Tomasz’ face again, or Beracek’s, with another name, in another place. Everyone who knew Luchezara deeply was already dead, save for one. She would always exist in his memory. It was as frightening as it was comforting, the threat of such permanence. She drifted off to sleep and had a nightmare about being encased in hammered brass as the centerpiece of a beautiful garden. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She woke up in what must have been the middle of the night. Lambert had come and taken some things from the room and appeared to have left for good while resisting the urge to kill her. It looked as though she would be on her own for a while. After making several trips to the stream for fresh water to heat for a bath, she left a cauldron or two of it over one of the fireplaces to warm. Finding herself in a small, dusty library while she waited, she picked through the shelves. Several boring histories of the realm, a shelf of saucy literature, manuals for Witchers, and alchemical texts. She pulled a thesis on the Conjunction, a romance novel about a highwayman and a duchess, and a volume of the Witchers’ bestiary. She took them, along with one more wriggling eel (to eat carefully, not spitefully) back to the tub. She slipped into the tub with a wince after hastily pouring the hot water into it. Intending to read first virtuously about the conjunction before moving on to the romance novel, she instead found herself thumbing rapidly through the bestiary. She held the eel between her teeth and used both hands to pry apart the book’s pages. She was in shock. So much was incorrect, or misinterpreted. Without the aid of a fountain pen, she resigned to dipping her finger into the water and smudging incorrect information from the vellum pages. Giving herself one last moment to soak, she dipped her hair under the water and washed around her face as carefully as she could and stepped out. She plaited her hair tightly in two braids, much more somber and grounded than her normal— no, former, now— style with satin ribbons and golden chains. She donned a new set of too-big linens. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She took a torch and wandered around the fortress’ rooms once again like a forlorn ghost, finding herself returning to the trophy room to sit and stare at the faces of precious lives that were cut down for misunderstandings, misinformation, and a fistful of coin. How many of the cullings made the survivors the last of their kind? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The trophy room was where he found her, in the end. He had gotten caught up, as Witchers often did from one point to another, in the affairs of some village suffering from this or that wraith or ghoul infestation. Eskel had banked all his hope that she’d reached Kaer Morhen. When he saw her gem-colored cloak blown by the wind like a banner in the darkness he knew she had. She was too lost in thought to hear his footfalls, until he dropped her pack that he’d picked up near the battlefield onto the stone floor. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I knew you’d make it here,” he breathed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Her own breath hitched in her throat as she twisted herself towards the words. She nearly tied herself in a knot scrambling upwards, and flung herself at his chest. As soon as she felt the rough wool of his jacket, her body heaved with sobs for which she didn’t even realize she still contained the strength. It wasn’t just a reunion, everything had changed. If it hadn’t, it would still have been strange. When they had first parted, they were not even lovers, they weren’t anything other than two lonely people who offered each other a bit of comfort. Now she clutched at the silly little spikes over the back of his jacket as if they were rock crags on a cliff over an endless drop. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Eskel held her there wordlessly as the emotional aftershocks passed. He brushed the tears from her unmarred cheek and kissed it.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t do what you t-t-told me to do;” She stuttered around residual sobs. She felt like she might vomit again. “I should have. I should have come here earlier. None of this would h-have… h-happened to me.” She’d always followed the lead of someone or something else for her own protection. Dijkstra. Beracek. Wolf packs, before she wandered into Novigrad, sheep herds. It was pure “human” hubris to strike out on her own. As much as she still felt it, it made her just as ashamed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He understood, and looked her square in the eyes. “Anyone would have done the same in your shoes.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I… I b-buried my head in the sand… I…” By the time she realized she also wouldn’t be spared by the city’s cult, it had been too late. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pulled away from her and squeezed her hands. “Who cares, now… that feels like five hundred years ago. It makes no difference. Either way, you would have made it here.” </span>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <span>“More or less in one piece.” She sniffed, and wiped her nose on her sleeve to reveal a pitiful smile. He laughed slightly, to lighten the air and release some of the nervous tension within himself.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Now we’re two of a kind. Can I… take a look?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She nodded, and peeled away the dressing just slightly. He whistled low. “That’s gonna heal interesting.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Interesting?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You certainly won’t look like a copy of a dead girl anymore.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t think it’s the time for gallows humor, Eskel…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh ah… blame it on the mutations. And I’m sorry. I’m so happy to see you, it feels so strange to feel grief for you too.” He picked up her old pack of lost valuables from the floor. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You found it…!” She took it from him and peered inside to find everything was where it should have been. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Not all. There’s a crone in Novigrad that’s got all your jewels, I’m afraid.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She shrugged. “Like you said… that already feels like so long ago.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Looks like you prefer a plain style now.” He snorted lightly, nodding to the Witcher whites she had been sporting. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She smiled, just barely. “Are you all so jocular to people who’ve just suffered a traumatic experience?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I’d say it’s the mutations, but it’s the nerves, too. Come on,” he took her hand and led her back towards the great hall. “You can tell me all about that experience. Tell me how you got away from that poacher.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>They sat together knee to knee and she told him all about it. The guard, the girl, the cudgel. The nobles, the nekker, the night, the knife. The cut had to be deep enough, she explained to him, that he wouldn’t have to wonder if it would heal perfectly, whether she could be back on the market soon after. The mark had to be permanent. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I told myself that I hadn’t come all this way to die. From the forest, to Novigrad, then back into the wilderness… to die back where I started would have been a waste. A great end to a horrible novel. But not for my life.” She paused to observe the way he looked at her in the firelight. “I… I really didn’t think you would come.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Aside from the fact that we tend to winter here anyway, I knew you weren’t safe.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How did you know?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He drew her little mother of pearl portrait out of one of the inner breast pockets of his jacket and laid it gingerly into her palms. It was warmed by his skin. “You wouldn’t have sent me this if you weren’t afraid you would disappear.” In more than one way. “I’m afraid we’ll have to take it to a jeweler and get the image modified, now.” He spoke more somberly. “I may have been too late to protect you, but I wanted to do what I could to help you recover from protecting yourself.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“And you knew I would come here eventually?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I did what I do best. I tracked you here. Novigrad, where the poacher set up shop, the battlefield… that’s where you stopped leaving tracks.” His voice halted, as if it were snagged on that word: battlefield. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You saw what I did.” The air of regaling was gone. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“In a town near it there’s already a bounty for you.” He held onto her hand, tracing his own fingers around each of hers as if reminding herself that the person with the answers and the heart was in front of him, and not some menacing collage of eyewitness reports printed on a bounty. “It’ll be impossible to fulfill. They don’t know what you are.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“But you do. You wouldn’t take it on?” The heat of his hand and the fire nearby them started to make her sweat.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He swallowed. “Of course I wouldn’t. It’s only that I don’t know why you even did it. And then twice… The poacher, I understand.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I killed those soldiers because I had to.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It wasn’t what he wanted to hear. What would he have preferred to hear? </span>
  <em>
    <span>It was an alp, she manifested out of thin air and killed them both. I could only watch; it was horrifying. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Any other answer than what she’d given would have been improbable. And yet, this one he also could not believe. He wouldn’t look at her, not in the way he had been only moments before. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You could have found help elsewhere. You could have found help with them without shapeshifting. Without stealing those lives.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I didn’t steal a thing, Eskel.” She withdrew her hand, trembling and clammy now, from his. “You think that after Novigrad I would get any help from Redanian soldiers? That I could come up with a fitting explanation for how I was there, torn up as I was, without revealing myself? That they didn’t have a fire to throw me on, too?” Her breath shuddered in her chest. “The boy on the battlefield was already dying. I wasn’t, not yet, and I needed the help they would have wasted on him. I made his end quick. It was mercy. I was unconscious in the tent; the shifting tends to be unpredictable, then. The other soldier learned I wasn’t human and attacked me. Eskel…”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He clenched his jaw, rubbed the scar on his cheek. One of his legs was bouncing madly on the floor, the only indication that he was in deep and troubled thought. “You did what you thought you had to…. I didn’t realize that you were capable of it… that’s all.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>The hurt rose in her chest like bile. It stung just as much as the vomit that still stood in the trophy room. “I’m </span>
  <em>
    <span>sorry. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Were those soldiers particularly special to you? Have you spent months writing to them, as well? Would you rather they be here, and not me?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You know that isn’t what I mean—“ He tried to catch her hand again, but she jerked it away. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pushed herself up to her feet and faced the fire. “I do know, Eskel, I know exactly what you mean. All humans are the same; I thought Witchers were at least a little different. I was wrong. The only good monster is a subservient monster or a dead one, right? I should have taken a dignified walk away from that battlefield. I should have nobly bled to death on the road. At least I wouldn’t have killed anyone. Gods forbid I do that! They were already cutting each other down, as humans do— shouldn’t let a </span>
  <em>
    <span>monster </span>
  </em>
  <span>have a piece of the action!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Luchezara—“ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“You would have preferred it if you could hold my gnarled little creature corpse in your arms. Then you could say how much you loved me, how beautiful I was </span>
  <em>
    <span>on the inside, </span>
  </em>
  <span>how righteous! ‘Oh, she’d let herself die before laying a hand on an undeserving human!’ This is what a monster is </span>
  <em>
    <span>supposed </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be in all of your eyes, isn’t it? Why do humans get to defend themselves with Witcher lap dogs, and we monsters are allowed to live so long as we’re ready to die for any human inconvenience?!” Her clear, cutting diatribe had come to a shaky, sob-filled shriek. She clutched her injured side as she caught her breath. “I’m sorry that you feel guilty that I’m here, still breathing because some strangers are not.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Do you feel guilty?” He asked calmly. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She roughly pulled at the tears on her cheeks that belied the truth. “I don’t feel anything.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Weren’t you so eager to assimilate when we met?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Sure… I was. I was, because I thought that was the end of running. They said, ‘we don’t want you in our woods.’ Hunted us down like dogs. So I came to their cities. Hunted there, too. I’ve been living for years in an illusion of my own design. I thought I was doing everything asked of me. What I didn’t know is that I wasn’t supposed to exist in their world at all. If you’re looking for someone to blame for what I’ve done, trace it all back to Novigrad, and know my hand was forced from the start. How many of the heads posted to the wall in your trophy room would communicate the same, if they still had breath?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was silent, but his gaze softened. He was standing, too, but they were far apart, the smoldering fire between them, spitting and crackling in the silence. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Lambert was here, you know. He fixed my stitches, and told me all about you. How you thought killing monsters would make humans see you as less of one, yourself. You let them do this to you, and then you grovel at their feet for them to care about it.” She watched him turn away, in shame or anger. His shoulders tensed. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Lambert doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I care about protecting people. That’s all.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Will you trust me that I do know what I’m talking about then, Eskel? The one who’s been reading your words again and again… the words of someone so much like myself. Hell, Eskel, you’ve let a doppler stare right into your skull for far longer than any reasonable human would! You asked me why I stopped wanting to ‘assimilate’... I don’t know why you still try, yourself.” She inched closer to him. Her words were having impact, but they were hurting him. “Protecting people is well and good, but beyond that there’s nothing you owe to anyone who doesn’t respect you… who doesn’t care about you… who isn’t in awe of the… the depth of you!” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He rounded on her, red-faced, brows so tightly drawn that if it hadn’t been for the reflecting light of the fire his eyes would have disappeared under the shadow they cast. Human eyes didn’t do that. They were speaking now, monster-to-‘monster.’ </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I don’t know what you want me to say.” He stuttered quietly. Every truth she spoke settled heavy and deep in his chest. There had never been another way of life offered to him, no other thing to strive for, no other way to feel as though he was a part of something larger than his lonely self, his nothingness. With Vesemir’s ashes in the ground, Geralt occupied more and more at Corvo Bianco, and Lambert’s (apparently broken) vow to never return, cold, prison-like Kaer Morhen was the last bastion of Eskel’s nothingness, and it’s manifestation. His arms fell to his sides in surrender. “I don’t know what to do.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Luchezara took his hand, and brought another hand up to the scar on his cheek. She brushed his hair from his eyes. “I want you to say that you’re glad I did all this to come here to find you. I want you to know that I did. I want you to say that you care for me, care for me more than for some anonymous humans…. because I don’t think I can live without you, now. I can’t become anyone else, because of how you know me, now. I can’t disappear. I exist as I am because you care for me. I want you to say that you’re glad for it.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He dropped to his knees and enveloped her wordlessly in an embrace so tight she found it hard to breathe until he exhaled, deep and long. “I do.” He whispered. The sound vibrated from her collarbone over her heart. “I do… I do…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She turned his cheek towards the light and placed kisses across his scars. “How about those emotionless Witcher mutations…?” She whispered in between them. She thought she felt a laugh reverberate in his chest. “Now, either stand up or I’ll get on the floor with you…. just don’t hold me so tightly, there…” He pulled himself up and rubbed his eyes with a rueful, crooked smile before she embraced him again. “Wait— just let me kiss </span>
  <em>
    <span>you, </span>
  </em>
  <span>if you kiss me, my face might just rip right in two again…” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“What if I promised to be gentle?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She pinched his full lips together playfully. “Not with these, no… and I don’t trust Witchers to be that way.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Thought you loved me…!”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“I said </span>
  <em>
    <span>I care for you</span>
  </em>
  <span>.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“How many more letters should I write to get you to love me, then…?” His lips settled for exploring her collarbone, missing the smell and sensation of her gold chains over her neck.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Fifteen…!” She managed through a giggle. “But I don’t think we’ll be writing many letters to each other, seeing as how you’ll be staying here with me until I’m well enough to leave.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He pulled away and feigned a sigh. “That’s a shame. I was looking forward to the love. Always wanted to be in love.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Me too.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Maybe someday it’ll happen for the both of us.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“With different people, maybe.” She elbowed his side playfully. “We just may be too similar.” She nodded when he pulled a bottle of something or another from a shelf. Couldn’t be worse than that poison she’d swallowed when she first. arrived.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Especially now with that face you’ve got.” He uncorked the bottle and poured it into two dusty shot glasses. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Watch it, or you’ll wake up one morning next to yourself.” She threw the shot down and winced. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“So we’ll be sleeping together now?”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Yes. Lambert’s room. I’ve already claimed it. My blood’s all over those sheets.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Very sexy.” He laughed through a cough after he swallowed his own shot. It was a sound still as deep and pleasing as ever to her. “And don’t worry. The sting of that cut will go away after a couple of weeks.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Before you make yourself back at home here I have to tell you that I vomited in the throne room.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Oh?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Whose kill was the Doppler?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Probably Vesemir’s, a couple of centuries ago. We don’t kill like that anymore. He told us he regretted it, a while back.”</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“Who’s Vesemir?” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>“He’s dead. But he would have loved you.” </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>She poured them another. And another. The night turned to day and blended into weeks and months, from winter into spring. Their echoing conversations filled the cavernous emptiness of Kaer Morhen. She laughed at him for having a woman in his bed for the first time, as much as he protested that it wasn’t in fact his </span>
  <em>
    <span>first time </span>
  </em>
  <span>with a woman. That was fine, she said, because she wasn’t technically a woman. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He taught her the ins and outs of Witchers’ work, and she told him all the ways it could fail. They corrected together the bestiary she had edited in the bath. They discussed a new way to be a witcher, of assisting in the rebuilding of Velen and the surrounding areas that made it safe for humans and remaining relicts and other monsters alike, of educating villagers and lords on how to live with non-humans to mitigate violence, death, and extinction. She would no longer live by the mercy of someone else. She would rebuild the world as she could the way it should have been, together with him. Perhaps in the distant future, he hoped in turn, there would be no more Witchers, no more painful genetic curse inflicted on children, making them into monsters to pay for human mistakes. In the meantime, they would be together. There would be no more emptiness, no alienation, no yearning for anything;  what they were was enough. It was the world that needed changing. </span>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>If you’ve read this far, now go read her next fic, “The Monster’s Witcher” ;)</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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